ABSTRACT
Information concerning attitudes can be gathered: (i) through observing people’s behaviours and/or (ii) by asking participants about their beliefs . Data pertaining to attitudes is typically obtained through either observational methods or self-report methods. The four major types of attitude scales described in the literature are (i) Thurstone scales; (ii) Likert scales; (iii) semantic differential scales; and (iv) Guttman scales. To access police officers’ prejudicial stereotyping towards suspects, the current study employed Guttman scalogram analysis to construct the Minhas Investigative Interviewing Prejudicial Stereotyping Scale (MIIPSS). The MIIPSS was developed by applying Guttman’s principle to sequentially identify the factors enabling the construction of the scale. This scale, in turn, measures whether police interviewers exhibit any prejudicial stereotypes towards suspects. The Guttman scalogram analysis suggested that the MIIPSS was found to be a valid model to understand the processes and those steps that were involved in identifying the occurrence of perceived prejudicial stereotyping within the investigative interviewing context. The MIIPSS provides an opportunity for researchers and police trainers to utilise it in research and practice, enabling them to measure the level of apparent racial and prejudicial stereotyping displayed by interviewers during police interviews and conduct in-depth evaluations of interviewing practices. Additionally, the MIIPSS could also serve as a tool to measure racial and prejudicial stereotypes in police interviews, particularly towards suspects from stigmatised groups or individuals suspected of different types of crimes.
