Jemal, Alexis Diane. Transformative consciousness of African American racial oppression and white racial privilege. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3DF6TCF
DescriptionOppression has been identified as a fundamental cause of disease. Critical consciousness has been identified as an antidote to oppression. Although critical consciousness theory has been used to address inequality, very few scholars have attempted to operationalize and measure the construct. For the dissertation, the author developed and tested a scale of a new theoretical construct grounded in the critical consciousness literature. In response to the conceptual inconsistencies noted in the literature, the author developed a conceptual model of Transformative Consciousness, hypothesizing three dimensions: Awareness, Behavioral-Response, and Consequence. The author then developed a scale following the steps outlined in DeVellis (2003). To examine the psychometric qualities of the scale, the author conducted a content validity study in which experts evaluated the scale for representativeness, clarity, and factor structure. The author pilot tested the scale on small groups to identify wording issues and to receive suggestions for improving the scale. After the final revision of the scale, the author recruited a convenience sample of 348 respondents primarily through email solicitation. Because the conceptual model of Transformative Consciousness is theoretically based, the author used Confirmatory Factor Analysis to analyze the data and found the hypothesized three models to be a good fit to the data. The author also found evidence of construct validity and reliability.