The Psychometric Properties of a Scale Designed to Assess Social Workers' Attitudes Toward Foster Youth Empowerment

Background and Purpose: Foster youth empowerment is a philosophy that is believed to support the healthy development of adolescents in the foster care system (Collins, 2004; Kaplan, Skolnik, & Turnvull, 2009). For this reason, the U.S. government has required independent living service providers that receive federal funds to include foster youth in the development and implementation of these programs (Collins, 2004). However, there are few options for administrators and researchers seeking to assess whether the workers who interact with foster youth hold an empowerment perspective and whether they integrate this perspective into their agency's practice. In order to meet this need, a general measure of attitudes towards youth empowerment was adapted for this population and analyzed for psychometric soundness. Methods: The key question addressed by this study was: Is the adapted version of the Inventory of Adult Attitudes and Behavior a valid and reliable measure of social worker attitudes towards foster youth empowerment? Lofquist and Martin (1993) created the original version of this measure with twenty-four items that they believe cluster into three constructs: viewing youth as objects to be controlled, viewing youth as recipients that can be allowed a limited amount of decision-making, and viewing youth as resources that can be full participants alongside adult workers in youth-serving organizations. These items were adapted by replacing “youth” with “foster youth” and replacing “adult” with “social worker.” Following this adaptation, the measure was administered to a purposive sample of 180 undergraduate and graduate social work students. The factorial validity and internal reliability of the adapted version were assessed through the use of factor analysis and the computation of Cronbach's alpha (á). Results: An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using principal components factor analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation was used to determine the probable nature and number of factors within the adapted 24-item Inventory of Adult Attitudes and Behavior (Lofquist & Martin, 1993). Five factors representing youth participation, shared engagement, adult oversight, adult responsibility, and management roles accounted for 60.3% of the variance. Youth participation and value of shared engagement accounted for 26.4% and 14% of the total variance explained, respectively. Adult oversight (8.7%), adult responsibility (6.2%), and adult management (5.1%) accounted for proportionately less variance. Item 24, originally an item viewing young people as objects, showed as the only item which, when deleted, increased Cronbach's alpha assessing scale reliability (from á = .850 to á = .874). Conclusions and Implications: While this study found that the adapted version of the Inventory of Adult Attitudes and Behavior holds promise as a measure of attitudes towards foster youth empowerment, its factorial structure is more complex than originally conceived by its creators. Replication with other samples and further refinement is warranted so that the measure may one day support the work of researchers who seek to examine the causes and effects of workers' beliefs and administrators who seek to ensure agency support of the empowerment philosophy.