Att mäta generell skam
En analys baserad på Raschmodellen
The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether Suzanne Retzinger?s linguistic cues for shame and verbal behaviors for hiding shame could be used to measure shame in surveys based on Thomas Scheff?s theory of shame. I created a measurement instrument consisting of 30 statements, which were all meant to measure general shame.The instrument was administrated to 180 respondents studying at Karlstad University, of whom 4 respondents were removed from the data set due to lack of standardization. With the polytomous rasch model used for the analysis, data from 176 respondents were analyzed, of whom 124 respondents were female and 52 were male.The result showed that the measurement instrument?s statements should not be used together because the analysis indicated multidimensionality. Further, differences in the statements way of functioning for different sample groups (gender, age groups and education orientation) were discovered ? which implies that comparisons between sample groups are inaccurate. A unidimensional and invariant subscale consisting of 4 statements, based on linguistic cues, were identified and may be useful for future research. It was therefore concluded that Suzanne Retzinger?s research about linguistic cues for shame is useful for measuring shame in surveys but that the project to develop an instrument for measuring general shame requires more time.