Polish Adaptation of the Personal and General Belief in a Just World Scales

Abstract

The article presents the adaptation process and psychometric properties of the Polish version of the Belief in a Just World Scale (BJW) developed by Dalbert. The BJW Scale contains two subscales: Personal Belief in a Just World (PBJW) and General Belief in a Just World (GBJW). The survey was conducted in four samples (N = 579) among students, workers, mothers of disabled children and the adolescent. The convergent and divergent validity was assessed on the basis of the correlation between the PBJW and the GBJW with the scale of rumination about the self and the rumination about the social world (Rumination Questionnaire), the personality traits of the Big Five Model (Ten Item Personality Inventory) and the sense of safety (Safety Experience Questionnaire). The reliability (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient α) of the PBJW was 0.92 and the GBJW was 0.84 in the sample of adults. The two-factor structure of the BJW Scale was confirmed. The parameters of model fit took the next values: RMSEA (0.035; 90% CI: 0.022; 0.048), GFI (0.990), CFI (0.994), TLI (0.992), SRMR (0.055) and χ2/df (1.59). The results indicate that the Polish version of the BJW Scale is valid and reliable and has very good psychometric properties. The study has shown that Polish respondents slightly tend to agree that the world is fair on them (mean of PBJW is 3.77; SD = 0.94), but they slightly disagree that it is fair in general (mean of GBJW is 3.10; SD = 0.95). In order to make appropriate hypotheses about the functional role of BJW for the unit, it was recommended to examine both the PBJW and the GBJW at the same time, as well as the relationship between these forms of BJW.