ConspiracistBeliefs2016: Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (2016 Data)
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ConspiracistBeliefs2016

R Documentation

Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale (2016 Data)

Description

Responses of 2449 persons to 15 five-point likert-rated items (0 = disagree to 4 = agree) measuring belief in conspiracy theories as well as responses on 2 covariates.

Usage

data("ConspiracistBeliefs2016", package = "psychotools")

Format

A data frame containing 2449 observations on 3 variables.

resp: Item response matrix with 15 items (see details below).
area: Factor coding the area one lived in as a child ("rural", "suburban", "urban").
gender: Factor coding gender ("male", "female", "other").

Details

The Open Source Psychometrics Project published this dataset collected online in 2016. Persons responded to the Generic Conspiracist Beliefs (GCB) Scale (Brotherton, French & Pickering, 2013) as well as other additional questions primarily for personal amusement. At the end of the test but before the results were displayed, users were asked if they would allow their responses to be saved for research. Only users who agreed are part of this dataset. Individuals with age lower than 13 years were not recorded. Moreover, two persons stating their age to be 5555 years or higher as well as 44 persons with missing data in area or gender were excluded from this dataset. The 15 items of the GCB Scale are:

Q1:	The government is involved in the murder of innocent citizens and/or well-known public figures, and keeps this a secret.
Q2:	The power held by heads of state is second to that of small unknown groups who really control world politics.
Q3:	Secret organizations communicate with extraterrestrials, but keep this fact from the public.
Q4:	The spread of certain viruses and/or diseases is the result of the deliberate, concealed efforts of some organization.
Q5:	Groups of scientists manipulate, fabricate, or suppress evidence in order to deceive the public.
Q6:	The government permits or perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil, disguising its involvement.
Q7:	A small, secret group of people is responsible for making all major world decisions, such as going to war.
Q8:	Evidence of alien contact is being concealed from the public.
Q9:	Technology with mind-control capacities is used on people without their knowledge.
Q10:	New and advanced technology which would harm current industry is being suppressed.
Q11:	The government uses people as patsies to hide its involvement in criminal activity.
Q12:	Certain significant events have been the result of the activity of a small group who secretly manipulate world events.
Q13:	Some UFO sightings and rumors are planned or staged in order to distract the public from real alien contact.
Q14:	Experiments involving new drugs or technologies are routinely carried out on the public without their knowledge or consent.
Q15:	A lot of important information is deliberately concealed from the public out of self-interest.

Additional information can be found online (see below) via inspecting the codebook contained in ‘GCBS.zip’.

Source

https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/.

References

Brotherton R, French CC, Pickering AD (2013). Measuring Belief in Conspiracy Theories: The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 279.

Open Source Psychometrics Project (2016). Data From: The Generic Conspiracist Beliefs Scale [Dataset]. Retrieved from https://openpsychometrics.org/_rawdata/.

Examples

## overview
data("ConspiracistBeliefs2016", package = "psychotools")
str(ConspiracistBeliefs2016)

## response
plot(itemresp(ConspiracistBeliefs2016$resp))
## covariates
summary(ConspiracistBeliefs2016[, -1])

psychotools documentation built on May 29, 2024, 8:12 a.m.