A Short Questionnaire for Assessment of Political Culture – Almond & Verba Updated and Operationalized

A Short Questionnaire for Assessment of Political Culture – Almond & Verba Updated and Operationalized M. Klicperova (Institute of Psychology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague), Jan Šerek (Masaryk University, Brno), Ivo K. Feierabend (San Diego State University, San Diego) The classical theory of Almond & Verba was updated (amended with alienation dimension) and operationalized into a 12-item political culture scale aimed at assessing parochial, subject, participant, and alienated tendencies. The questionnaire was administered to a national quota sample of the Czech Republic (N = 863) as a part of a longitudinal study in March 2021. The data were subjected to Latent Profile Analysis with a three-profile solution which approximated major contrasting types of political culture: (1) The most numerous (388) Alienated type (mean age 43.11, 55% females) is characterized by passive defiance of the state and government and by a negative opinion on politics in general. (2) The next in size, Participant profile (271; mean age 41.27, 61% males, most highly educated) stands out by high activism and high self-reported political knowledge; while the Participants equal the Alienated by their negative opinion of the current state and gov´t, the Participants differ by a tendency NOT to reject politics in general. (3) The Subjects (204; mean age 47.23, 51% females, least educated), are primarily defined by very high subjection to the state and gov´t irrespective of merit. These types of political culture are further validated by a wide array of additional responses on voting behavior, covid-related tendencies, and various social and societal opinions. E.g., the Alienated typically claimed they had not participated in elections, the Subjects cast most ballots for the ruling populist “YES” party, the Participants cast most of their ballots to centrist democratic parties. These voting patterns were stable and almost identical eight months later. These empirically-derived types of political culture also differed in the hypothesized direction in the covid-19 context: the Subject group was most- and the Alienated least-willing to be vaccinated; the Participants cared most about choosing the manufacturer of their vaccines. Concerning hoaxes, the Alienated were least conforming to the official narrative and most falling for the fake news. The follow-up of this political culture typology will help to determine to what degree these profiles indeed represent a stable culture or vacillate with situational opinions. Conclusion: The classic Almond & Verba theory inspired the development of a questionnaire for assessing individual political culture. The resulting typology appears valid with respect to the criteria of opinions and voting tendencies expressed concurrently as well as eight months later.