A psychometric validated model for political leadership, trust and voters’ behaviour in Malaysia
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Date
2022
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia
Abstract
Political leadership, political trust and voters’ behaviour are three major areas within the domain of political psychology. The application of political psychology theory and concepts to the practice of politics in Malaysia is new and minimal. This justifies the presence of this research that analyses the Malaysian political environment. Since the 14th General Election (GE-14), Malaysian politics has been in crisis. The impact of this crisis is tremendous. The people are expecting a strong country and political stability. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to develop a psychometrically validated model to facilitate the design of workable solutions to the political issues in the country because it relates to leadership and trust as well as the well-being of the people. The sample of this study was Malaysians above 21 years old. This research has successfully developed and validated “Political Behaviour Model”. In developing the model, Rasch Measurement Model and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) were employed. The value of RMSEA was 0.073 and CFI was 0.902, in which both achieved the threshold of less than 0.08 and above 0.90 respectively. The Chi-sq/df was 2.421 which was within the acceptable range of between 2 and 5. Thus, the model has achieved the goodness-of-fit with the research data. The model has three constructs which are political leadership, political trust, and voters’ behaviour. This study has also found that political trust runs in full mediation between political leadership and voters’ behaviour, hence becomes a mechanism. Trust, which is a psychological contract between the people and the state, assumes that the state will honour with well-meaning policies. Political leadership should not betray as it will lead to trust deficit and eventually political distrust. This model validates the need for the presence of political leaders who are competent, committed, and resilient. This model is also hoped to bring the nation toward goodness and continue to advocate the psychological contract.
Description
Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy)
Keywords
Political psychology, Psychometrics