Towards a New Understanding: Validating a Multidimensional Political Will Measure.

Research indicates political behavior affects individuals' outcomes not only through political skills but also through motivation - the political will - to use such skill. The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a multidimensional measure of political will. In three studies (n = 1,592), we wrote items and conducted content validation, exploratory factor analyses and confirmatory factor analyses. In phase one, we reviewed the literature on political will, determined the number of dimensions, and constructed items corresponding to each dimension. Additionally, we conducted a content validation study where participants completed an item-sorting task. In phase two, we collected data from working students in order to examine the dimensionality and factor structure of political will. Finally, in phase three, we collected data from working adults on Prolific to further confirm the factor structure of political will, as well as to examine convergent and discriminant validity with related constructs. The five dimensions of political will were only modestly correlated with each other and exhibited largely dissimilar relationships with other related constructs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]