Humanities & Social Sciences, Vol 7, No 4 (2014)

Ethnic Tolerance Scale Development: Renovation of Integrated Approach

Gershons Breslavs

Abstract


Many theoretical models have contributed to the field of intergroup relations, but the concept of social tolerance is still very ambiguous despite huge progress in social psychology and related fields in the recent 50 years. The concept seems too complicated and researchers prefer to analyze tolerance/intolerance components: stereotypes, prejudice, perception biases and social discrimination which seem to be more one-dimensional and available for the study. At the same time, without such data social policy in ethnic integration cannot be well goal-directed. Social and personality psychology lack integrated criteria for the assessment of ethnic tolerance/intolerance and the above-mentioned one-dimensional partial measures of ethnic tolerance cannot compensate this deficit, since they reveal only some aspects of intergroup attitudes. The elaboration of such a holistic personality measure for the assessment of intergroup relations in Latvia was the goal of this work*. The five-stage process of scale development has been used. Results have shown that a valid and reliable instrument for ethnic tolerance assessment has been elaborated. The model of elaboration could be applied in all countries.