Development and validation of the Chinese public official strain scale.

Using general strain theory (GST), this research aimed to develop and validate a self-reported measure of strains that may trigger white-collar offense. The Chinese Public Official Strain Scale (CPOSS) was developed through three studies. Study 1 established the initial item pool through interviews with public officials convicted of economic corruption. Study 2 used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to explore the latent structure of CPOSS with offenders recruited from 21 prisons. Study 3 adopted confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and item response theory (IRT) to assess the psychometric properties of CPOSS with a new sample of inmates from 39 prisons. In addition, the criterion validity of CPOSS was evaluated using the Social Responsibility Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale, and two dimensions from the Schwartz Value Survey. All items were developed with high content validity using GST. EFA provides a four-factor structure consistent with typical strain sources of white-collar crime. CFA proved this four-factor model was robust. After filtering out indiscriminate items via IRT, the final 17-item version of CPOSS presented good internal reliability, and constructive and criterion validity. The 17-item CPOSS shows good psychometric properties and can be used in future empirical studies on strain and white-collar crime. • A measure was developed to assess strains triggering white-collar crimes. • The Chinese Public Official Strain Scale (CPOSS) shows good psychometric properties. • The CPOSS shows potential to overcome measurement restrictions of previous studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]