The SECS measures political conservatism as a general orientation toward issues, separating its social and economic sides. Respondents rate how positively or negatively they feel about twelve short issue labels, such as traditional values, religion, limited government and business, rather than agreeing with full policy statements. Everett (2013) generated the issues from what American respondents saw as central to contemporary conservatism, then validated the scale with 291 U.S. adults recruited through MTurk. Because it uses brief labels and a feeling thermometer, the scale is quick to administer and avoids wording tied to particular laws or parties.
Feeling thermometer, 0–100 (0 = very negative, 100 = very positive), rated in multiples of 10
Social conservatism
Economic conservatism
Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.
Cronbach's alpha was .88 for the full scale, .87 for the seven-item social subscale and .70 for the five-item economic subscale (Everett 2013); the economic subscale falls below conventional thresholds, so the total score or the social subscale is preferable where reliability matters. Exploratory factor analysis supported two correlated factors, and a CFA showed acceptable fit (SRMR = .06, RMSEA = .07). Total scores correlated .71 with self-placed conservatism, were higher among Republicans than Democrats, and correlated with social dominance orientation, system justification, resistance to change and dogmatism. Scores are averaged after reverse-scoring. The article marks welfare benefits as reverse-scored; abortion also loads with the conservative items in the reported factor solutions, indicating it was reverse-coded too. Gun ownership loaded on the economic rather than the social factor. Two further candidate items (tax, immigration) were dropped as ambiguous.
Everett, J. A. C. (2013). The 12 item Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS). PLoS ONE, 8(12), e82131.
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