Tables for: On ‘Doing Conspiracy Theory’. Introduction and Validation of the Conspiracy Practice Scale (CPS-6)

Conspiracy theories have recently been met with a lot of public scrutiny. They are generally addressed as a form of belief system that is underpinned by psychological dispositions. In contrast, we introduce the Conspiracy Practice Scale (CPS-6) as a novel instrument focussing on the spread and consumption of conspiracy theories as a form of social practice. In a random split of a dataset collected in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland (N = 6,460), exploratory factor analysis was employed to determine dimensionality of the CPS-6 and discriminate it against conspiracy mentality (nEFA = 3,229). CPS-6 emerged as distinct single dimension with good overall reliability (α = .86, ω = .87). Results were confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on the second split (nCFA = 3,231). Multi-group CFA revealed measurement invariance across countries and convergent validity was indicated by correlations with related constructs. Overall, results show CPS-6 to be a reliable and valid short-scale to measure conspiracy practice as a distinct construct.