Attributions on the causes of general and child poverty in Argentina

SEGRETIN, M.S.; REYNA, C.; LIPINA, S.J.

virtual

Congreso; Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) 2021, Biennial Meeting; 2021

Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD)

Background:In the last decades, different studies have addressed the perspectives of people regarding thecauses of poverty, as they could play a fundamental role in the development of individual and social attitudes,beliefs, and expectations towards people living in such a condition, and in the strategies implemented to solverelated problems and issues (Babjaková et al., 2019). In addition, many of those studies have investigated thecauses of poverty using the theoretical model proposed by Feagin (1972), which suggests three broadexplanations: (1) Individualistic (i.e., causal attribution is placed on the poor themselves); (2) structural (i.e.,poverty is due to external social and economic factors), and (3) fatalistic (i.e., poverty is attributed to factors suchas bad luck). In addition, most of those studies have been carried out considering the causes of poverty ingeneral, which means that there are very few studies (Dunga & Makalima, 2016) aimed at studying specificallythe causes of child poverty. Given the high incidence of poverty in Argentina (INDEC, 2020), an area of socialpriority for our community, and of scientific concern for generating basic and applied knowledge, we proposed tostudy attributions of the causes of poverty in general, as well as of child poverty.Objective:The present study proposes to determine the psychometric properties of two questionnaires aimed atexploring the causal attributions of general and child poverty by adults from different districts in Argentina.Methods:A virtual questionnaire was implemented in the Google Form platform in September 2018. Recruitmentwas done through a flyer disseminated on social networks that gave access to a page with a description of thestudy and a consent check box (procedures were approved by the IRB).Participants: The sample includedresponses from 1659 citizens of Argentina from 17 to 90 years old (M = 45.72, SD = 16.94).Instrument: Thequestionnaire included 32 items aimed at evaluating the attribution of causes of general poverty and 30 items ofchild poverty. Participants were asked to indicate the importance of each item as a cause of poverty on a five-point Likert-type scale (1=does not matter; 5=extremely important).Analytical plan: We conducted exploratory andconfirmatory factor analyses (separately from the general and child questionnaires) and retained items with factorloadings at or above .40. In addition, for the general questionnaire, a second approach was implemented toanalyze if the factorial structure supported by different studies in the literature was confirmed in this sample. Forsuch a purpose, confirmatory factor analyses were implemented.Results:The results of the first approach about causal attributions of general poverty suggest a model of threefactors in the exploratory analysis, which fits with those proposed in the literature (RMSEA=0.071; CFI= 0.94;TLI=0.93). Nevertheless, this model was not confirmed (RMSEA=0.103; CFI= 0.88; TLI=0.86). On the other hand,the results of the second approach suggest the confirmation of the two-factor model proposed in the literature(RMSEA=0.083; CFI=0.96; TLI=0.95). In the case of the causal attributions of child poverty, the results suggest atwo-factor structure in the exploratory analysis, which was confirmed with adequate psychometric properties(RMSEA=0.074; CFI=0.94; TLI=0.93).Conclusions:Regarding the questionnaire for the attribution of causes of poverty in adults -which included itemsalready used in the literature and new ones-, the exploratory analysis allowed identifying a three-factor structureas in the case of other studies. However, the non-confirmation of the model suggests sensitivity to the inclusion ofnew items. In this sense, in future studies, it would be important to invest efforts in determining new items fromconsultations with experts and other social actors. Regarding the questionnaire for the attribution of causes ofpoverty in children, the identification and confirmation of a two-factor model is a new piece of evidence in the field,which suggests variability in the attribution of causes of poverty by adults according to the considered age group,and whose potential internal and external mechanisms in comparison with the studies on adult poverty should beexplored in future studies. Finally, this study confirms that having valid and reliable instruments to explore thecausal attributions of general and child poverty would be important to advance in the understanding of poverty asa complex and multidimensional phenomena.