Measuring authoritarianism in a Greek health care setting

Few studies have investigated the level of authoritarianism in the area of health. Staff with authoritarian personality may put in danger the quality of health services, especially towards stigmatized groups, such as the mentally ill and HIV positive people or the minority ethnic communities. Authoritarianism Scale (AS) by P. Heaven, is an instrument focusing on the multi-faced nature of authoritarianism and authoritarian behaviors. The aim of this study is to assess the psychometric properties of the Greek Authoritarianism Scale (AS) and to explore authoritarian attitudes of people employed in health services, in Greece. Initially, 600 individuals (health employees and medical students) were enrolled and completed AS. Additionally, 33 postgraduate students completed AS twice, in an interval of 30 days. In order to assess the psychometric properties of AS explanatory factor analysis was performed, which resulted in a 20-items scale and revealed five (5) factors: "Leadership", "Verbal hostility", "Military way of thinking", "Fear-Suspiciousness", "Achievement Motivation". Cronbach's alpha value overall was satisfactory (0.79), while values for every factor separately ranged from 0.55 to 0.76 showing moderate to satisfactory reliability. AS's test-retest reliability was high: ICC showed high to excellent agreement of AS total and factor scores between the two time points. Women and older people were less authoritarian while youngers, students and staff with primary education showed more authoritarianism. Psychiatric staff presents the lowest AS total score comparing to the other specialties. Significant differences in all categories of the sample arose in "Achievement Motivation". Greek version of AS, as evaluated in a Greek health staff sample, revealed interesting differences among participated subgroups and had overall satisfactory reliability. The influence of Authoritarianism on the major issues of our days, such as immigration flows, social and financial crisis, leads to the need of the existence of reliable measures of its assessment.