Attributions on the Causes of General and Child Poverty in Argentina.

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic -Diversity, Equity & Social Justice

Abstract

Background: In the last decades, different studies have addressed the perspectives of people regarding the causes of poverty, as they could play a fundamental role in the development of individual and social attitudes, beliefs and expectations towards people living in poverty, and in the strategies implemented to solve problems (Babjaková et al., 2019). Also, many of those studies have investigated the causes of poverty using the theoretical model proposed by Feagin (1972) which suggests three broad explanations: (1) Individualistic (causal attribution is placed on the poor themselves); (2) structural (poverty is due to external social and economic factors), and (3) fatalistic (which attribute poverty to factors such as bad luck). In addition, most of those studies have been carried out regarding the causes of poverty in general, identifying very few studies (Dunga & Makalima, 2016) aimed at studying specifically the causes of child poverty. Given the high incidence of poverty in Argentina (INDEC, 2020), an area of social priority for our community, and of scientific concern for generating basic and applied knowledge, is the study of the attributions of the causes of poverty in general, as well as child poverty specifically.
OBJECTIVE: The present study proposes to obtain evidence of the psychometric properties of a questionnaire that measures the causal attributions of general and child poverty in the local context.
METHODS: A virtual questionnaire was implemented in the Google Form platform in September 2018. Recruitment was done through a flyer disseminated on social networks that gives access to a page with a description of the study and a consent check box (procedures were approved by the IRB). Participants: The sample included responses from 1659 citizens of Argentina from 17 to 90 years old (M = 45.72, SD = 16.94). Instrument: The questionnaire included 32 items aimed at evaluating causes of general poverty, and 30 items on the causes of child poverty. Participants were asked to indicate the importance of each item as a cause of poverty on a five-point Likert-type scale (1=does not matter; 5=extremely important). Analytical plan: We conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (separately from the general and child causes of poverty) and retained items with factor loadings at or above .40. The analyses are still under review by authors.
RESULTS: Preliminary results about causal attributions of general poverty suggest a model of three factors, which coincide with those proposed in the literature (RMSEA=0.065; CFI=0.858; TLI=0.84). In the case of the causal attributions of child poverty, two models were identified. Given that we have not identified previous studies aimed at evaluating the causes of child poverty in the terms proposed here, both models are considered. The first suggests three factors (structural, familiar, and parental explanations); and the second indicates two factors (structural and familiar causes). Both have adequate and similar psychometric properties (RMSEA=0.071/0.070; CFI=0.879/0.884; TLI=0.857/0.861).
Having a valid and reliable instrument on the causal attributions of general and child poverty would be important to advance in the understanding of poverty as a complex and multidimensional phenomena.

Authors

• María Soledad Segretin, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)
  Presenting Author

• Cecilia Reyna, Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIPSi, UNC-CONICET)
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sebastian Javier Lipina, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET)
  Non-Presenting Author