The Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy: An Empirical Test of Core Theoretical Propositions

PurposeProcedural justice and police legitimacy have been recognized as important antecedents to people's willingness to cooperate with police officers and obey the law. What existing literature lacks, however, is a thorough psychometric examination of procedural justice and police legitimacy with respect to convergent and discriminant validity.MethodsThe present study employs confirmatory factor analysis to examine convergent and discriminant validity and ordinary least squares regression to assess whether revised scales operate similarly to ones used in past research.ResultsResults suggest that the legitimacy construct is not internally consistent and that one of its subscales loads with the procedural justice items to form a single scale composed of both procedural justice and legitimacy items. Regression analyses indicate that the modified measures operate similarly to traditional ones.ConclusionIt is urged that researchers pursue the theoretical and empirical development of procedural justice and police legitimacy in order to further the study of the normative model of policing.

► Confirmatory factor analyses assess procedural justice and police legitimacy.
► Problems with convergent and discriminant validity are found.
► Data-driven scales are constructed.
► Revised scales operate similarly to the originals.
► Need for further theoretical development of procedural justice and police legitimacy.