Testing the critical waters: replication, further refinement and validation of the Critical Social Justice Attitudes scale

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3248898/v1

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Testing the critical waters: replication, further refinement and validation of the Critical Social Justice Attitudes scale

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3248898/v1

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Objectives: The present study set out to refine and further validate a scale for assessing critical social justice attitudes as well as replicate results from a previous study. This study assessed the reliability, factor structure, model fit, and both convergent and divergent validity of the scale. The study examined the prevalence of critical social justice attitudes in different subpopulations and probed the scale’s correlations with well-being and other variables.

Methods: Participants were a nationwide sample (n = 5030) of people aged 15-84. 5 new candidate items for the scale were introduced and after analyses, 4 were included in the final version of the critical social justice attitudes scale (CSJAS; 11 items).

Results: The final CSJAS scale had high reliability and good model fit as well as convergent and divergent validity. Overall, the study sample rejected critical social justice propositions, with strong rejection from men but cautious support from women (gender difference: d = 1.16). CSJAS was correlated with depression, anxiety, and (lack of) happiness, but not more so than being politically left was.

Conclusions: The Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale was successfully constructed and validated. It had good reliability and model fit.

critical social justice attitudes

critical social justice

critical social justice attitude scale

anxiety

depression

Critical social justice attitudes (CSJA) refer to what Sensoy and DiAngelo (2017) termed: “A critical approach to social justice refers to specific theoretical perspectives that recognize that society is stratified (i.e., divided and unequal) in significant and far-reaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this.” That is, CSJA encompass a cognitive propensity to perceive various forms of oppression, both structural and overt, and a behavioral willingness to intervene in perceived oppression.

The theoretical basis for holding CSJA beliefs comes from contemporary public, particularly online, discussion. The crux of critical social justice discourse manifests most of all in the media, social media, contemporary activism, and best-seller books (DiAngelo, 2018; Kendi, 2019; Mathews and Jones, 2022; Pluckrose and Lindsay, 2020). However, theoretically, critical social justice derives from canonical statements in the academic literatures of intersectional feminism, critical race theory, queer theory and transgender theory, and postcolonial theory, which in turn have preceding intellectual ancestors in, e.g., critical theory and postmodernism (Crenshaw 1990; Delgado & Stefancic, 2013; McCann & Monaghan, 2019; Mishra & Hodge, 1991).

In a prior study, the Critical Social Justice Attitude scale was constructed and validated (redacted for peer review). The scale performed well in factor and reliability analyses. The study did not assess divergent validity, that is how well the scale differentiates critical social justice attitudes from related concepts, and thus further validation and replication of all previous findings in a new sample is in order. The scale items were also perhaps not evenly balanced between the two different aspects of critical social justice attitudes.

The first CSJAS study assessed 21 candidate items for the scale, however only four of these items assessed the second major component of CSJA, behavioral willingness to intervene in perceived oppression. Thus, five new items assessing CSJA-consistent ways of intervening in oppressive behavior were added for analyses in this study. These include combating microaggressions (small slights that are perceived to be offensive to marginalized people) and cultural appropriation (a privileged group adopting, e.g., traditions or dress from an oppressed group), and attempting to enact safe spaces (where speech is limited to what is considered inoffensive to marginalized people), attach trigger warnings to, e.g., texts (warnings that the text may contain offensive depiction or language), and persuade people into declaring their gender pronouns online (Arao & Clemens, 2013; Bellet et al., 2018; McGlashan & Fitzpatrick, 2018; Rogers, 2006; Sue et al., 2007).

The present study set out to refine and further validate the CSJAS and replicate results of the previous CSJAS study in relation to scale reliability and factor structure. This plan was implemented via a large-sample nationwide study drafting its sample from readership of Finland’s largest circulation newspaper.

Participants and procedure

Study participants (n = 5030) were 2634 (52.4 %) men, 2112 (42.0 %) women, 120 (2.4 %) people with “other” gender, and 164 (3.3 %) unwilling to specify a gender. Participant ages ranged from 15-84 with mean at 41.2 years. Four participants were removed due to their very young age (11-14) and one participant for highly anomalous answers. 2974 (59.1 %) participants had an academic degree: bachelor’s (7.7 %), master’s (26.0 %), licentiate (2.1 %) or a doctoral degree (3.9 %), 1542 (30.7 %) had either an upper secondary (15.4 %) school or vocational degree (15.3 %), and 222 (4.4 %) only had secondary school training or less (211 N/A, 4.2 %; 81 “other”, 1.6 %). Party preferences roughly corresponded to a national Helsingin Sanomat poll same month, with some exceptions. 11.8 % of respondents said they do not vote (N/A 18.3 %). Out of people who said they vote, the National Coalition Party had 23.9 % support (vs. 24.2 % nationally), Finns 15.6 % (vs. 17.3 %) and Swedish People’s Party 2.6 % (vs. 4.6 %). Substantial overrepresentation was seen for Green Party (19.1 % vs. 9.0 %) and Left Alliance (16.9 % vs. 8.3 %) and underrepresentation for the Social Democratic Party (10.0 % vs. 19.0 %) and Centre Party (3.4 % vs 10.4 %). 8.5 % said they support another party.

1226 participants worked (n = 275) or studied (n = 951) at a university whereas 3690 did not (114 N/A). Biggest university representation was from University of Helsinki (n = 236), (University of Turku) (n = 110), and University of Tampere (n = 102). 85 were from University of Eastern Finland, 79 from University of Jyväskylä, 76 from University of Oulu, and 15 from Åbo Akademi (378 were from applied universities, 115 from technical universities, 93 from “other” Finnish university, and 51 from a university abroad). Biggest fields were natural sciences/technical (n = 309), applied sciences (any; n = 225), humanities (n = 147), business/economics (n = 118), social sciences (n = 98), political science/philosophy (n = 84), medicine (n = 83), education (n = 75), law (n = 54), and psychology (n = 39; 81 “other”). Participants were from all over Finland with the most participants from Helsinki (n = 1133), Uusimaa (n = 1011), and Central Finland/Pirkanmaa/Häme (n = 1010). The study was preregistered (redacted for peer review). Preregistration included the study design and planned primary analyses.

Critical social justice Attitude Scale refinement

Five new items were added into the CSJAS questionnaire based on the observation that items in the first CSJAS study reflected the cognitive propensity to perceive oppression aspect of CSJA better than the willingness to actively intervene in perceived oppressive speech or actions aspect. These new items all reflected the behavioral aspect of CSJA and they were added to investigate whether the items would perform well when compared to other CSJAS items. The new items were on microaggressions, cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, safe spaces, and online gender pronouns.

Data collection

Data were collected using the Webropol online survey tool. In October 20^th 2022 the highest circulation newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, ran a story on a previous CSJAS study (redacted for peer review). The story included a link to the study survey. This resulted in thousands of answers to the survey with a nationwide sample of all ages, genders, and party preferences.

Measures

Critical social justice attitudes. Critical social justice attitudes were measured with the 20 scale items and five additional new items (CSJAS3-4, CSJAS10-11, and CSJAS13; Table 2) designed for the study. All items were devised by the author, using feedback from pilot testers to fine-tune details in phrasing. Answer options for these items were 1 = “completely disagree”, 2 = “somewhat disagree”, 3 = “not agree, not disagree”, 4 = “somewhat agree”, and 5 = “completely agree”. New items were based on contemporary social media conversation, news items, podcasts, popular books, and academic discourse on topics the items cover.

Anxiety. Anxiety was measured with the brief generalized anxiety measure, the GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006). It measures anxiety over the last two weeks with seven items (e.g., asking participants how often they have been bothered by “Not being able to stop or control worrying”), each with four answer options ranging from 0 (“not at all”) to 3 (“nearly every day”). Scores for GAD-7 range from 0 to 21. Minima for all of our scales on the questionnaires were 1 (e.g., GAD-7 items ranged from 1 to 4) and the scales were later centered to start from 0. The scale was internally consistent (a = .94).

Depression. Depression was measured with a single item devised for the study: “I have experienced symptoms of depression during the last month.”

Happiness. Happiness was measured with a global happiness item from UN’s World Happiness Report, where participants are asked to rate their quality of life on a scale from 0 to 10 (Helliwell, Layard, & Sachs, 2020).

Other additional items. Participants were asked for their gender, their year of birth, their level of education, whether they study or work at a university, which one and which field, party they typically vote for, are they politically left or right (1 = “very much left”, 2 = “somewhat left”, 3 = “in the center”, 4 = “somewhat right”, 5 = “very much right”), how liberal/conservative they are (1 = “liberal”, 2 = “somewhat liberal, somewhat conservative”, 3 = “conservative”, 4 = “radical”; when calculating correlations, option 4 was excluded as it can refer to both left and right radicalism), how much they appreciate democracy, capitalism, the welfare state, individualism, and three prominent public persons (Greta Thunberg, Barack Obama, and J. K. Rowling; scale in all appreciation items from 1-5, “not at all” to “very much”). The following questions from the previous CSJAS study were included: “I have experienced significant oppression from others.”, “I think violence against politically dangerous people is justified”, “If my friend called me “woke” in good faith, I would agree with them, regardless of whether I approve of the term or not.”; global critical social justice attitude item).

Compliance with ethical standards

All procedures performed involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. As participants were adults and the study only involved answering standard questionnaires and attitude items, ethical board review was not needed and is not required in Finland where the study was performed. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. Before answering the survey, participants were presented with the following consent message: “The answers to this survey will be used in a study on critical social justice attitudes and well-being. Your answers will be saved and analyzed anonymously in the study. By continuing to fill out the survey you indicate you have understood the above and give your consent to your answers being used as anonymous research data.”

Analysis plan

Interitem correlations were to be calculated for the highest loading 15 items from the previous CSJAS study and the 5 new candidate items for the Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale (redacted for peer review). Scale reliabilities measured in Cronbach’s alpha were to be evaluated for each version of the scale starting from 20 items. Correlations versus control variables (left-right and liberal-conservative axes) were to be compared with correlations to the global CSJA item, and, to increase the scale’s divergent validity, items with highest relative correlations with control variables were to be cut from the scale (cutoff was set at ³ .05 than the item’s correlation with global CSJA).

Exploratory factor analyses (EFA, in SPSS) would then be used to evaluate the factor structure of the scale and how excluding some of the worst-performing items would affect the factor structure and reliability of the scale. The factor solution would be obtained using principal component analysis and corroborated using parallel analysis, with final scale expected to explain at least 50.0 % of scale variance and have reliability above a = .80. Rotation method was oblique (“direct oblimin” in SPSS) to allow correlations between factors. Analysis plan was amended to confirm EFA with separate analysis for men and women due to large gender differences in results. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA, in R) would be used to evaluate model fit for the final scale SRMR (RMSEA is counterindicated for very simple models; Kenny et al., 2015). EFA and CFA would also be replicated in file split at random (n = 2515 for each), with EFA on the other half and CFA on the other. Study subpopulations (genders, education level, different party preferences, left-right, liberal-conservative, students vs. others, university vs. non-university) would be compared to each other in terms of critical social justice attitudes and well-being. Finally, the procedure would be compared to preregistration to point out possible changes to protocol.

Scale reliabilities, EFAs, CFAs, and item refinement

CSJAS. The first reliability analysis was run for all 20 items (15 best performing items used in the original validation of CSJAS and 5 new items; CSJAS1-20, Table 2; redacted for peer review) resulting in Cronbach’s alpha of .83. Each item’s correlations with control variables (left-right, liberal-conservative) were then compared to the item’s correlation with the global CSJA item. Three items had more than ³ .05 higher correlations with the left-right axis than with global CSJA and were discarded: “Other people and/or structures are more responsible for my well-being than I myself am.” (r = .45 vs .34), “Rioting or looting are not justified even if they are committed by an oppressed person.” (.38 vs .29), “The ideas of Karl Marx should not have more influence in national politics.” (.55 vs .49; CSJAS18-20). No items had higher correlations with the liberal-conservative axis than with the global CSJA item. Exploratory factor analysis was then run for the resulting items. Two items, “Microaggressions* are to be challenged often and actively.” (CSJAS1), “You should not say things that might offend an oppressed person.” (CSJAS17) were noticed to be very similar in their content, rendering one of them redundant. The former item performed better in EFA and the latter item was discarded. Finally, a possible content problem was identified with another item, “There are two biological sexes in the human species.” (SJAS12): it is possible to support this claim for reasons not having to do with CSJA, namely for a different scientific interpretation of the definition of biological sex (to include chromosomal or hormonal anomalies, for instance). Additionally, the claim that there are multiple biological sexes (instead of genders) is not central to critical social justice. This item was discarded from analyses.

The remaining 15 items formed a unifactorial scale (parallel analysis: 1.00 vs 1.09), explaining 47.5 % of variance, with loadings .49-.81 (a = .92). EFAs were then run dropping the worst performing item each time until 11 items remained to form the final scale, with 54.0 % percent of variance explained and loadings .64-.82 (including CSJAS1-11, discarding CSJAS12-16; a = .92). Confirmatory factor analysis was thus run for a single factor model with 11 items. The analysis indicated good fit: CFI = .96 and SRMR = .03. Splitting the file into an EFA half and CFA half gave nearly the same results: one factor explained 53.5 % of variance and had .64-.82 factor loadings in the EFA half and CFI = .97 and SRMR = .03 in the CFA half. Also, separate analyses for men (a = .86; 1 factor: 43.9 %, .51-.80) and women (a = .90; 1 factor: 48.1 %, .58-.78) gave the same factor structure. When evaluating genders separately, model fit was good (CFI = .94 SRMR = .04) for women and (CFI = .95, SRMR = .03) men.

Answer distributions for male and female participants are shown in Table 3. Overall, male support for scale items was much lower than female. Regarding the extent to which select study subpopulations accepted, felt neutral about, or rejected scale items, people with “other” gender, Left Alliance voters, Green Party voters, and female social science students accepted most scale propositions. Men and Finns voters rejected all scale items.

One item (CSJAS5) had wording issues that were identified when revising the scale with help from outside evaluators, and its wording was modified slightly after collecting the data for the study: “Trans women in the Olympics are not helping women’s rights.” was modified to refer to sports in general and clarifications were added to indicate the definition of trans women (this definition was also added to CSJAS4, “Trans women are women.”) and that they were competing with women: “Trans women* who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights. (*=born male, identify as female)”. (Table 2). Very slight modifications were also applied to CSJAS1 and CSJAS2: The last word in CSJAS1, “If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of oppression.”, was changed to the more specific formulation “racism”, and CSJAS2, “The police are a racist institution.”, was modified to “The police are institutionally racist.”

Correlations, descriptives, and t-tests

All final scale items for CSJAS were again moderately positively correlated with anxiety (r = .19-.28), depression (r = .16-.24) and weakly correlated with lack of happiness (r = .07-.15). CSJAS1, (“If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of racism.”), had the largest positive correlation with anxiety, and along with CSJAS4 (“We should have more safe spaces in society.”), with depression. CSJAS8 (“The police are institutionally racist.”), had the largest negative correlation with happiness. CSJAS7 (“There are two biological sexes in the human species.”) had the smallest negative correlation with all three mental health items. Self-reporting as “woke” and CSJAS items were again strongly correlated (r = .72), indicating the scale had convergent validity. Self-reporting as woke had substantially lower correlations with left-right (r = .55) and liberal-conservative (r = .43) axes indicating the scale had divergent validity. Self-reporting as woke was also correlated with anxiety, depression, and (lack of) happiness. Anxiety, depression and (lack of) happiness were, again, strongly correlated with each other. However, being politically left had similar or slightly higher negative mental health correlations than CSJAS and the global CSJA item. Being politically liberal had weaker positive correlations with anxiety and depression, and negative with happiness, than CSJAS or being politically left had.

Descriptives (means and standard deviations) are displayed in Tables 1 and 4 for all respondents, men, women, those who responded “other” for gender, students, faculty, non-academic respondents, and select party voter, student, and faculty subpopulations. Taken together, the sample cautiously rejected critical social justice attitudes, with CSJAS score (0-4) for all being 1.45 [1.42, 1.48]. Women had more than twice higher CSJAS scores (1.98 [1.94, 2.02] vs .95 [.92, .98]); Cohen’s d: 1.17), and much higher self-reported “wokeness” than men (1.11 [1.06, 1.17] vs 2.11 [2.05, 2.17]; Cohen’s d = .76). Men had modestly better well-being. Lowest well-being, highest CSJAS scores, and strongest belief in political violence being justified were in the “other” category for gender. Female social sciences students high CSJAS scores and low well-being relative to other participants. Male business, law and medical students, and female STEM, education, and humanities faculty had the highest well-being. Finns voters and male STEM faculty had the lowest CSJAS scores.

A binary variable for CSJAS scores below (n = 3542) and above (n = 1482) the scale midpoint (2.0) was constructed for t-tests. Large differences were noted between high-CSJAS and low-CSJAS participants in anxiety and depression (t = -17.65, and t = -14.63), and a moderate difference in happiness, belief that political violence is justified, and personal experiences in oppression (t = 7.31, t = -3.48, and t = -6.46). Looking at genders separately, results involving mental health held regardless of gender. High-CSJAS men expressed they had experienced more oppression, and felt political violence was more justified than, low-CSJAS men. However this did not hold for women as much, with a small effect for oppression and next to none for political violence. Differences in mental health scores were likely to a large part due to being politically left, which had a similar or slightly higher correlation with anxiety, depression, and lack of happiness than CSJAS scores had. A high CSJAS score was associated with a belief in political violence being justified more than being on the political left was, though the difference was not large (r = .10 vs .05).

Preregistration

Preregistration for the study listed 4 nondirectional hypotheses which to investigate: 1) whether model fit and reliability for CSJAS are good, 2) CSJAS correlation with well-being variables, 3) possible changes to the scale from 5 additional items, and 4) investigate how political preferences and opinions relate to CSJAS. EFAs and CFAs were carried out as planned, though the investigation in the study was much broader than planned in the preregistration as genders were looked at in separate analysis and the file was also split into EFA and CFA halves for further confirmation of the model. Left-right and liberal-conservative axes were used for divergent validity evaluation, which was not explicated in the preregistration.

The present study set out to refine and further validate a scale for assessing critical social justice attitudes. The revised 11-item Critical Social Justice Attitude Scale (CSJAS) had good-to-excellent psychometric properties: high reliability and a factor structure that had good fit in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The scale was, as in the previous study, strongly correlated with self-reported “wokeness”, indicating convergent validity (redacted for peer review). It also explained variance unexplained by related concepts, left-right and liberal-conservative axes, indicating divergent validity. New items involving willingness to intervene behaviorally in perceived oppression performed well in the analyses and four out of five new items found their place in the scale. The revised scale thus now spans the conceptual dimensions of critical social justice better, with six items reflecting the cognitive propensity to perceive oppression and five items the willingness to intervene in perceived oppression aspects of critical social justice.

Having high CSJAS scores was, as well as in the previous CSJAS study, linked to anxiety, depression, and a lack of happiness. However, the present study indicated that this lower level of mental well-being was mostly associated with being politically left and not specifically with having a high CSJAS score. The association between lower mental health and supporting the political left is in line with what other studies have found prior to this one (e.g., Bernardi, 2021; Gimbrone et al., 2022).

On the whole, again, men rejected the entire CSJA scale, whereas women were cautiously supportive of scale items. People who supported left-wing parties and female university students in social sciences, education, and humanities, as well as people with “other” gender, were the most in support of the scale items. On the whole, the study sample rejected the phenomenon with the 5030 participants, on average, agreeing with 0 items, in-between about 5 items, and rejecting 6 items, even though left-wing party supporters were overrepresented in the sample.

Limitations and future directions

To note limitations, first, the wording of a scale item (CSJAS4) was edited after the study for added clarity. Light modifications were also made to two other scale items (CSJAS1 and CSJAS7 see Table 2). The English versions of the items in Table 2 indicate the items’ proper wordings, but the ones used in the study may have resulted in slightly biased answers. Second the study sample was possibly more educated than Finns on average are, due to the sample being based on the readership of a newspaper. There was also overrepresentation of people who supported left-wing parties, which probably biases the results in the direction of stronger social justice attitudes somewhat.

The Critical Social Justice Attitudes Scale has now been validated in two large scale studies and can be used by other researchers to assess levels of CSJA in populations of interest. At least in the two studies thus far conducted with the scale, support for CSJA has been quite low overall, though they are relatively popular in several female subpopulations (e.g., left-wing party supporters and social sciences students). However, this may only be the case in Finland and other researchers can look at how things are in various other populations of interest.

Conflict of interest

The author reports no conflict of interest.

Author contributions

A1: Designed the study, collected the data, conducted the analyses, and wrote the manuscript.

Data availability

All data used in the study is openly available at (redacted for peer review).

The data that support the findings in this article are available online at

https://osf.io/k2qx9/files/osfstorage

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Table 1.

Descriptives for select subpopulations

	AN (0-21)	DE (0-4)	HA (0-4)	VI (0-4)	OP (0-4)	GC (0-4)	CSJAS (0-4)	L-R (0-4)	L-C (0-2)	CAP (0-4)	IND (0-4)	JKR (0-4)
All	4.19	.95	7.51	.76	1.37	1.60	1.45	2.03	.77	2.03	2.24	2.00
Men	3.33	.80	7.55	.78	1.26	1.11	.95	2.41	.90	2.42	2.46	2.09
Women	5.07	1.07	7.53	.68	1.42	2.11	1.98	1.64	.63	1.60	1.98	1.97
Other	7.06¹	1.83¹	6.51¹	1.42¹	2.51¹	2.88²	2.72¹	.61*	.25	.93	1.97	.89*
Student All	4.79	1.11	7.23	.75	1.39	1.71	1.52	1.95	.68	1.99	2.20	1.93
STEM M	3.76	.83	7.31	.75	1.16	1.07	.92	2.52	.91³	2.41	2.47	1.98
STEM F	6.09	1.28	7.22	.78	1.38	2.45	1.90	1.70	.54	1.84	2.21	1.74
Med M	2.29	.77	7.69	.24	.81	1.17	1.06	2.43	.83	2.72	2.56	2.09
Med F	5.24	1.29	7.20	.33	1.33	1.76	1.71	1.76	.80	1.95	1.79	2.60³
Busin M	2.91	.79	7.65	.69	1.00	.94	.87	2.83³	.82	3.10¹	2.69¹	2.14
Busin F	3.88	.71	7.63	.92³	.95	1.95	1.70	2.14	.45	2.50	2.43	2.30
Hum M	4.13	1.25	6.56²	.68	1.55	.83	.87	1.97	.81	2.31	2.72	2.07
Soc M	3.56	1.38³	7.13	.94²	1.88³	1.27	1.07	2.31	1.13²	1.94	1.80	2.71²
Soc F	6.89²	1.34	6.98³	.57	1.77	2.67	2.40	1.19	.35	1.23	1.66	1.83
Faculty All	3.71	.82	7.71	.62	1.25	1.63	1.58	1.76	.68	1.97	2.15	2.14
STEM M	3.26	.77	7.03	.89	1.17	1.00	.74	2.47	.90	2.31	2.61³	1.91
STEM F	3.60	.54*	8.08	.23	.77*	1.42	1.59	1.42	.67	2.31	1.92	2.54
Soc F	4.64	1.18	7.91	.60	1.18	(1.78)	2.00	1.40	.57	1.55	1.36*	1.80
Ed F	3.13	.90	8.50*	.20*	1.10	(2.00)	2.51	1.33	.50	1.50	2.00	2.30
Hum F	4.08	.62	8.31	.69	1.92²	(3.00)¹	2.37	1.00	.44	1.00	1.54	2.91¹
Non-acad All	4.12	.93	7.54	.75	1.38	1.58	1.42	2.05	.79	2.02	2.24	2.00
Low-CSJAS	3.44	.80	7.61	.71	1.28	1.07	.85	2.44	.95	2.33	2.40	2.20
High-CSJAS	5.96	1.31	7.27	.86	1.58	2.84	2.72²	1.10	.32	1.29	1.86	1.60
Left Alliance	6.13³	1.43²	7.09	.92³	1.75	2.69³	2.56³	.64	.28*	.87*	1.69	1.57
Green Party	5.28	1.13	7.40	.64	1.25	2.60	2.31	1.28	.34	1.59	1.97	1.81
Nat Coalition	2.75*	.56	8.05	.66	.95	1.03	.93	3.02²	.91³	2.93²	2.68²	2.39
Finns	3.12	.74	7.51	.79	1.39	.57*	.51*	3.07¹	1.37¹	2.64³	2.53	2.20

AN = anxiety, DE = depression, HA = happiness, VI = violence justification, OP = oppression experience, GC = global CSJA, L-R = left-right, L-C=liberal conservative, CAP = capitalism, IND = individualism, JKR = J. K. Rowling. Med = medicine, busin = business, soc = social sciences, ed = education, hum = humanities, non-acad = non-academic. Superscript for three groups with highest score, asterisk for group with lowest score (happiness reversed). Parentheses when n<10.

Table 2.

Candidate items and factor loadings for CSJAS (reversed items marked ‘r’; altered wordings with superscript numbers)

	Item
		20-item	11-item
CSJAS1	If white people have on average a higher level of income than black people, it is because of racism.¹	.81	.82
CSJAS2	University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.	.80	.81
CSJAS3	Microaggressions* are to be challenged often and actively. (= verbal communication or act, which can be seen to reflect negative attitudes towards a minority group, regardless of original intent)*	.79	.81
CSJAS4	We should have more safe spaces in society.	.79	.81
CSJAS5	Trans women who compete with women in sports are not helping women’s rights. (=born male, identify as female)² (r)	.76	.77
CSJAS6	Trans women are women. (=born male, identify as female)	.72	.74
CSJAS7	The police are institutionally racist.³	.69	.68
CSJAS8	If a white person doesn’t admit they are racist, they are still probably racist.	.67	.66
CSJAS9	We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin. (r)	.64	.66
CSJAS10	Content warnings do not need to be added to written text that may expose people to experience disturbing emotions. (r)	.63	.65
CSJAS11	A member of a privileged group can adopt features or cultural elements of a less privileged group. (r)	.62	.64
CSJAS12	A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well as another black person.⁴	.61	-
CSJAS13	It would be preferable for cisgendered people to announce their gender pronouns in, for instance, their social media profiles (=people who feel they are the sex assigned in their birth)	.60	-
CSJAS14	Every act is either racist or antiracist and there are no other alternatives.	.54	-
CSJAS15	Limiting speech rights of privileged speakers is not justified. (r)	.48	-
CSJAS16	There are two biological sexes in the human species. (r)	.69	-
CSJAS17	You should not say things that might offend an oppressed person.	.65	-
CSJAS18	The ideas of Karl Marx should not have more influence in national politics. (r)	.57	-
CSJAS19	Other people and/or structures are more responsible for my well-being than I myself am.	.51	-
CSJAS20	Rioting or looting are not justified even if they are committed by an oppressed person. (r)	.48	-

Study wordings: ¹=”If white people have on average a higher income than black people, it is because of oppression.”, ²=“Transwomen in the Olympics are not helping women’s rights.”;³=The police are a racist institution. ⁴=”A white person cannot understand how a black person feels.”. Factors forced to load on the single CSJAS factor.

Table 3.

CSJAS item answer distribution in percentages

	Item	Men (%)					Women (%)
		1	2	3	4	5	1	2	3	4	5
CSJAS1	If white people have on average a higher level of income than black …	51.6	29.1	5.4	10.5	3.4	19.0	24.7	8.0	35.9	12.4
CSJAS2	University reading lists should include fewer white or European authors.	55.4	22.4	12.5	6.7	3.0	21.0	21.9	17.7	23.4	15.9
CSJAS3	Microaggressions* are to be challenged often and actively.	44.8	23.9	8.3	16.1	6.8	13.2	15.5	8.1	33.4	29.8
CSJAS4	We should have more safe spaces in society.	42.6	19.4	13.5	14.0	10.4	12.7	12.2	12.8	25.0	37.3
CSJAS5	Trans women who compete with women in sports are not helping … (r)*	5.3	5.4	6.0	16.2	67.0	20.2	19.4	11.8	21.0	27.7
CSJAS6	Trans women are women. (=born male, identify as female)	40.4	21.9	7.9	19.0	10.8	13.4	14.3	8.2	26.8	37.3
CSJAS7	The police are institutionally racist …	75.6	14.9	2.7	4.3	2.6	46.8	27.7	7.3	13.6	4.6
CSJAS8	If a white person doesn’t admit they are racist, they are still probably racist.	69.2	17.1	5.3	5.6	2.8	37.6	27.4	10.9	19.1	4.9
CSJAS9	We don’t need to talk more about the color of people’s skin. (r)	8.6	11.6	10.4	24.5	44.9	20.1	26.6	9.1	22.5	21.7
CSJAS10	Content warnings do not need to be added to written text that may expose …	49.7	20.8	7.2	15.3	7.0	18.6	32.1	7.6	20.7	21.0
CSJAS11	A member of a privileged group can adopt features or cultural … (r)	6.7	8.5	11.7	26.1	47.0	13.7	27.6	16.7	25.7	16.4
CSJAS12	A white person cannot understand how a black person feels equally well …	30.6	29.4	7.3	22.3	10.5	9.3	17.9	5.3	33.1	34.4
CSJAS13	It would be preferable for cisgendered people to announce their gender …*	71.6	10.4	12.3	3.0	2.7	47.9	18.8	19.2	8.2	5.8
CSJAS14	Every act is either racist or antiracist and there are no other alternatives.	88.3	6.8	2.4	1.3	1.2	66.0	22.9	5.7	4.0	1.5
CSJAS15	There are two biological sexes in the human species. (r)	7.3	6.0	2.3	16.0	68.4	20.4	21.1	4.7	22.1	31.6
CSJAS16	Limiting speech rights of privileged speakers is not justified. (r)	10.1	7.2	3.9	14.4	64.4	10.1	25.5	8.0	23.8	32.7
CSJAS17	You should not say things that might offend an oppressed person.	34.8	30.4	5.8	20.7	8.3	9.7	22.5	5.8	35.0	27.0
CSJAS18	The ideas of Karl Marx should not have more influence in national … (r)	6.7	8.1	16.0	13.0	56.3	5.1	14.7	32.3	19.2	28.7
CSJAS19	Other people and/or structures are more responsible for my well-being …	53.9	30.2	6.6	7.0	2.3	32.6	42.0	10.4	13.2	1.8
CSJAS20	Rioting or looting are not justified even if they are committed by an … (r)	2.1	3.4	1.9	10.2	82.4	1.9	6.0	3.0	19.3	69.9

1=“completely disagree”, 2=”somewhat disagree”, 3=”not agree, not disagree”, 4=”somewhat agree”, 5=”completely agree”

Table 4.

CSJAS score (0-4) among participant groups

				All		Male		Female
All				1.45		.95		1.98
Secondary school degree				1.73		1.15		2.23
Vocational degree				1.21		.86		1.83
High-school degree				1.46		1.05		1.97
Applied Sciences degree				1.36		.87		1.94
Bachelor’s degree				1.63		1.09		2.10
Master’s degree				1.56		.94		2.02
Doctoral degree				1.43		.99		2.07
Left Alliance				2.56		2.19		2.62
Green Party				2.31		1.82		2.50
SDP				1.80		1.37		2.08
SPP				1.61		1.10		2.17
Centre Party				1.12		.90		1.49
National Coalition				.93		.73		1.39
Finns				.51		.44		.76
	All	Male	Female	Other	HU	UTU	UTA	UEF	Tech
University student	1.52	.99	2.04	2.75	1.73	1.62	1.71	1.73	1.21
University teacher/researcher	1.58	1.11	2.06	(1.42)	1.83	1.44	2.01	(1.07)	1.12

Scores in parentheses when n < 10; “-“ when n = 1 or 0. HU = Helsinki University, UTU = University of Turku, UTA = University of Tampere, UEF = University of Eastern Finland; Points in parentheses when n<10; “-“ when n=1 or 0.

No competing interests reported.

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Testing the critical waters: replication, further refinement and validation of the Critical Social Justice Attitudes scale

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