Tell us how you Really Feel: Validating an Inmate Social Climate Survey
- PDF / 439,407 Bytes
- 23 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 3 Downloads / 174 Views
Tell us how you Really Feel: Validating an Inmate Social Climate Survey Melissa W. Burek 1 & John C. Liederbach 2 Received: 18 June 2020 / Accepted: 10 September 2020/ # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2020
Abstract Correctional facilities have a discernible social climate, or collection of contextual properties that derive in part from the perceptions of inmates. These properties include the physical, organizational, social, and emotional characteristics of correctional institutions. Social climate directly influences the attitudes and behavior of inmates, their well-being, and prison management. The present study describes the results of an applied research project conducted in association with a government agency that audits Ohio’s prisons and youth facilities through site inspection visits and survey data. The agency’s questionnaires, as well as the procedures used to sample inmates and administer the instruments, were evaluated to determine the degree to which they accurately reflected the perceptions of inmates and the social climate of the correctional institutions. We identified several problems related to survey construction and administration. The results suggest that the surveys are at least to some degree not measuring several important dimensions of the correctional environment and the experiences of inmates as intended. Keywords Prisons . Social climate . Survey validation . Survey administration . Applied
research . Inmate perceptions Correctional facilities have a discernible social climate, or collection of contextual properties that derive in part from the perceptions of inmates. These properties include the physical, organizational, social, and emotional characteristics of correctional institutions (Ross, Diamond, Liebling, & Saylor, 2008, Tonkin, 2016; Wright, 1985, 1993). * Melissa W. Burek [email protected] John C. Liederbach [email protected]
1
College of Health and Human Services, Bowling Green State University, 105 Health and Human Services Building, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA
2
Criminal Justice Program, Bowling Green State University, 223 Health and Human Services Building, Bowling Green, OH 43403, USA
American Journal of Criminal Justice
Prison social climates are an important issue of concern for scholars, corrections professionals, and other stakeholders because these properties influence several factors important to prison management and the well-being of inmates. Social climate directly influences the attitudes and behavior of inmates. Inmate perceptions of social climate have been linked to measures of perceived institutional disorder and the likelihood of disturbances, and they are believed to impact treatment outcomes and recidivism (Schubert, Mulvey, Loughran, & Loyosa, 2012; Tonkin, 2016). Social climate also directly influences the perceptions and behavior of prison staff. Staff perceptions of social climate are correlated with various job performance measures, including absenteeism, job satisfaction, and levels of fear and stress (Bressington, Stewart, Beer, & Ma
Data Loading...
