A New Model for Old Measures: A Covariance Structure Analysis of Political Efficacy

Political efficacy is a key concept in theories of political participation and democratic governance. This paper uses covariance structure analytic techniques to assess the adequacy of traditional SRC indicators for measuring political efficacy in the United States and other liberal democracies. Analyses indicate that a two-factor model of a subset of these indicators fits data for the U.S. and six other countries very well, with item loadings corresponding to prevailing conceptual distinctions between internal and external efficacy. In the American case the structure of the model is invariant by race, gender and political context, and the relative strength of correlations between the efficacy factors and measures of personal competence and perceived government responsiveness agrees with theoretical expectations. Although the SRC items appear to be useful measures of efficacy, simple equally weighted additive indices such as those utilized by the SRC itself are inadequate. More sophisticated measurement models are required.