Psychometric properties of Prosocial Tendency Measure in three different cultures

RICHAUD DE MINZI, M.C.; CARLO, G.; MESURADO, B.; KNIGHT, G.

Ciudad del Cabo

Conferencia; Internacional Congress of Psychology; 2012

Psychometric properties of Prosocial Tendency Measure in three different cultures Authors: María Cristina Richaud (CIIPME) Gustavo Carlo (University of Missouri) Belén Mesurado (CIIPME) George P. Knight (Arizona State University) Existing measures of prosocial behaviors are divided into global and situation specific measures. There is recent evidence that different types of prosocial behaviors have different personal and situational correlates (Carlo, 2006). Carlo and Randall (2002) proposed six kinds of prosocial behaviors: (1) Altruistic: voluntary helping motivated primarily by concern for the need and welfare of others, (2) Compliant: helping others in response to request (3) Emotional: helping others under emotionally evocative circumstances (4) Public: conducted, at least in part, by a desire to gain the approval and respect of others and enhance one?s self-worth (5) Anonymous: performed without knowledge of whom is helped (6) Dire: helping in crisis or emergency circumstances. Based on this model, a multidimensional measure of prosocial behavior (Prosocial Tendencies Measure; PTM) was developed. Although evidence on the utility of examining different forms of helping is mounting, research on the psychometric properties of the measure to use with adolescents from different cultures is lacking. The purpose of this presentation is to analyze the psychometric properties of the PTM in adolescents from three different cultures: Argentina, Mexican-American and European-American. This study included 849 participants from Argentina (M age = 11.34 years, SD = 1.04; 54.7% girls), 185 from Mexican-American (M age = 10.89 years, SD =.84; 53.9% girls) and 125 from European-American (M age = 11.05 years, SD = .77; 46.4% girls). The 21-item version of the PTM (Hardy & Carlo, 2005) was composed of 6 subscales: public (?I can help others best when people are watching me.?), anonymous (?I prefer to donate money anonymously.?), dire (?It is easy for me to help others when they are in a bad situation.?), emotional (?It makes me feel good when I can comfort someone who is very upset.?), compliant (?I never wait to help others when they ask for it.?), and altruism (reverse score items, ?I think that one of the best things about helping others is that it makes me look good.?). Participants were asked to rate the extent to which statements described themselves on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (does not describe me) to 5 (describes me greatly). To study the factor structure in the three different cultures, three confirmatory factor analyses were performed using software AMOS 16.0. The theoretical model that indicates six factors corresponding to the six proposed dimensions of prosocial behavior fit the data satisfactorily in all cultures: Argentina [c2 (174) = 765.6, p = .000, c2/df =4.4; GFI = .92; AGFI = .89, NFI = .91, RMSEA = .06]; Mexican-American [c2 (174) = 300.38, p = .000, c2/df =1.73; GFI = .87; AGFI = .83, NFI = .77, RMSEA = .06], and finally European-American [ c2 (174) = 315.48, p = .000, c2/df =1.81; GFI = .80; AGFI = .74, NFI = .76, RMSEA = .08 ]. Concerning reliability as internal consistency, the alpha coefficients for Argentinean, Mexican-American, and European-American are the following, respectively: public = .66; .76; .79, anonymous =.73; .66; .71, dire = .73; .64; .72, emotional = .89; .76; .75, compliant = .78; .49; .61, and altruism = .70; .69; 86. Discussion will focus in the similarities and differences between the psychometric properties of three samples. In general it can be said that there is an appropriate stability in the PTM factor structure and in its reliability as internal consistency.