Adaptation of a cross-national measure of fear-based xenophobia to Turkish culture

The purpose of this study is to adapt a cross-national measure of fear-based xenophobia to Turkish culture. This measure is a unidimensional cumulative attitude scale comprising five items, ordered according to difficulty parameters. It assesses participants’ fear of foreigners using the stereotype content model, categorizing outsiders according to indices of warmth and competence. The participants were 360 students (218 females, 142 males) from two state universities in the capital of Turkey. The students were surveyed during the 2018–2019 academic year, and the data were analyzed through Mokken scale analysis. Responses to the survey questions divided the participants into two groups: those who agreed with the first item on the questionnaire and those who agreed with the other statements (2–5); statements 2–5 indicated nearly the same level of fear of foreigners. The data met the assumptions; a monotone homogeneity model was more suitable, and more than two-thirds of the participants responded to the scale in line with the sequential grading. Moreover, the reliability coefficient of the measurements obtained from the Turkish form of the cross-national measure of fear-based xenophobia scale was high.