Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale (BCA)

Abstract

The Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale (BCA) (Cervone et al., 2024) is a psychometrically validated, impartial self-report instrument designed to quantify individuals’ willingness to participate in social and political mobilization while strictly uncoupling behavioral engagement from specific ideological orientations or issue stances. Historically, empirical research in social and political psychology has assessed collective action using context-bound scales that inadvertently conflate behavioral passivity with ideological disagreement (i.e., treating an individual who opposes a progressive or conservative goal as equivalent to an inactive supporter). The BCA addresses this methodological limitation by framing behavioral engagement in relation to respondents’ self-identified positions across any socio-political issue.

Developed and cross-validated across adult samples in Italy and the United Kingdom, the BCA captures collective mobilization across two distinct, robust dimensions: Normative Activism (actions that conform to established institutional, legal, and social norms, such as petitions, demonstrations, and community organizing) and Non-Normative Activism (actions that violate institutional norms, legal statutes, or civic regulations, including civil disobedience, physical blockades, and direct confrontation). The final instrument features 9 primary items rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (“surely not”) to 7 (“surely”). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate structural integrity via confirmatory factor analysis (CFI = .99, TLI = .99, RMSEA = .05, SRMR = .02), internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega reaching .84 to .89 across subscales and .87 to .88 for the total instrument), and construct validity supported by correlations with participatory efficacy, past activism, emotional markers (e.g., anger and contempt), and systemic attitudes.

Keywords

Collective Action, Belief-Aligned Collective Action Scale, Activism, Normative Action, Non-Normative Action, Social Movements, Political Psychology, Protest Behavior, Psychometrics, Civil Disobedience

Authors

The Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale was conceptualized, psychometrically developed, and empirically validated by a team of social and political psychologists affiliated with the Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation at the University of Padova, Italy:

• Carmen Cervone, Ph.D. — Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy. ORCID: 0000-0003-0057-0356. Corresponding Email: [email protected].
• Caterina Suitner, Ph.D. — Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy. ORCID: 0000-0001-5211-100X.
• Luciana Carraro, Ph.D. — Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy. ORCID: 0000-0001-8100-4609.
• Anne Maass, Ph.D. — Department of Developmental Psychology and Socialisation, Università degli Studi di Padova, Padova, Italy. ORCID: 0000-0001-9802-5246.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale (BCA) is to provide an impartial, issue-general psychometric inventory that assesses an individual’s behavioral readiness to mobilize on behalf of their ideological convictions, independent of the ideological valence of the cause itself. In classical social psychological paradigms, researchers investigating social mobilization predominantly designed ad-hoc questionnaires tied to specific, progressive causes (e.g., environmental protection, feminist movements, or labor rights). In such traditional measures, participants who responded with low scores could represent two fundamentally distinct psychological profiles: (a) individuals who fully supported the social cause but remained behavioral non-participants due to apathy, low political efficacy, or resource constraints, or (b) individuals who actively opposed the cause itself.

By failing to separate ideological stance from action propensity, prior scales generated conflated variance, impeding accurate scientific modeling of protest behavior and social movement dynamics. The BCA resolves this measurement confound by employing a belief-aligned design. Respondents first report their personal stance or ideological orientation toward a focal topic, and subsequent behavioral items assess their willingness to defend, advance, or assert that self-identified position. This methodological structure allows researchers to measure behavioral readiness across diverse issues (e.g., climate action versus fossil fuel protection; reproductive rights versus pro-life advocacy) without altering the core psychometric instrument.

In addition to overcoming ideological confounding, the BCA addresses practical research needs within political psychology, sociology, and public policy. The scale allows researchers to examine differential predictors of normative civic actions versus radicalized or disruptive collective actions. It provides empirical clarity on the psychological correlates that lead individuals from lawful institutional lobbying to illegal, high-risk protest behavior, making it an invaluable tool for understanding polarization, democratic engagement, and the escalation of civil unrest across contemporary socio-political landscapes.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the BCA is collective action readiness, operationalized as an individual’s declared willingness to invest personal effort, time, and agency into group-based political behaviors to promote, assert, or defend a self-relevant ideological stance. Rather than viewing mobilization as a unitary behavioral tendency, psychometric and theoretical research distinguishes between two qualitative forms of mobilization: normative collective action and non-normative collective action (Wright et al., 1990; Cervone et al., 2024).

1. Normative Activism

Normative activism refers to collective actions that operate within the established institutional frameworks, legal boundaries, and cultural conventions of a given society. These behaviors are socially institutionalized mechanisms for expressing civic voice, attempting to influence social policy, corporate practices, or public attitudes through authorized channels. Indicators of normative activism include:

• Formal civic petitioning: Endorsing paper or online petitions to pressure governmental or corporate decision-makers.
• Public assembly: Participating in authorized rallies, marches, or peaceful demonstrations to demonstrate group strength and ideological visibility.
• Institutional advocacy: Drafting letters to political representatives, state institutions, or media outlets to articulate ideological demands.
• Community organizing and distribution: Assisting in the coordination of advocacy events, handing out informational flyers, and engaging in grassroots informational campaigns.

Psychologically, normative action is driven by high levels of participatory and institutional efficacy—the belief that standard civic pathways are functioning mechanisms capable of delivering social redress—and is typically fueled by targeted, moralized anger rather than societal contempt.

2. Non-Normative Activism

Non-normative activism encompasses collective behaviors that transgress legal statutes, procedural guidelines, or established social contracts. These disruptive actions reflect an escalation beyond institutional communication channels and are frequently adopted when systemic reform is perceived as impossible, unresponsive, or fundamentally illegitimate. Indicators of non-normative activism include:

• Unlawful protest behavior: Committing deliberate illegal acts during demonstrations to force public or political attention.
• Physical obstruction: Utilizing one’s body to block entrances to public buildings, government facilities, or infrastructure corridors.
• Civil disobedience and squatting: Illegally occupying spaces, buildings, or land to defend ideological principles or disrupt opposing entities.

Non-normative activism carries significant personal risk, including legal prosecution, physical danger, and societal stigma. Psychologically, it is underpinned by feelings of alienation, intense frustration, and contempt toward the status quo, paired with a perceived failure of normative avenues.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual framework of the BCA is grounded in several foundational paradigms within political and social psychology, synthesizing models of group identity, system appraisal, and emotional action tendencies.

Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA)

The Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA) (van Zomeren et al., 2008) posits that collective mobilization is predicted by three core psychological pillars: social identity (subjective identification with a group or cause), perceived injustice (affective reactions to group grievances, particularly moral anger), and perceived collective efficacy (the belief that group efforts can achieve desired social outcomes). The BCA operationalizes the outcome space of SIMCA by offering a pure behavioral metric unburdened by specific group membership, enabling researchers to test SIMCA across both advantaged and disadvantaged groups, as well as across opposing ideological factions.

Typology of Normative vs. Non-Normative Action

The structural bifurcation of the BCA draws directly from Wright, Taylor, and Moghaddam’s (1990) seminal typology of responses to social disadvantage. Wright and colleagues posited that when group boundaries are perceived as impermeable and status hierarchies as illegitimate, individuals turn to collective over individual mobility. Whether those actions are normative (conforming to the rules of the existing system) or non-normative (violating social or legal rules) depends heavily on the perceived openness and responsiveness of systemic channels. When individuals believe conventional institutions are impervious to change, non-normative pathways emerge as the primary vehicle for political agency (Tausch et al., 2011).

System Justification Theory

According to System Justification Theory (Jost & Thompson, 2000), individuals possess an epistemic and existential motive to defend, bolster, and rationalize prevailing socio-economic and political arrangements. In the theoretical framework underlying the BCA, system-justifying beliefs (such as Economic System Justification and Social Dominance Orientation) serve as powerful ideological inhibitors of collective action. High system justification suppresses perceived injustice and dampens mobilization readiness. Conversely, when individuals reject system legitimacy, their willingness to engage in normative and non-normative actions rises markedly, moderated by the emotional engines of group-based anger and contempt.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion validity of the BCA were rigorously established through empirical investigations across two national contexts: Italy and the United Kingdom (Cervone et al., 2024).

Construct and Convergent Validity

The BCA demonstrated robust convergent validity through its associations with theoretically linked psychological constructs:

• Perceived Action Efficacy: Willingness to engage in normative and non-normative actions correlated significantly with the perceived efficacy of those specific behaviors. In the Italian sample, correlations ranged from r = .37 to .62; in the UK sample, coefficients ranged from r = .48 to .61 (all p < .001).
• Past Mobilization: Self-reported willingness on the BCA exhibited strong convergent correlations with participants’ historical engagement in past protest and civic actions across both subscales.
• Participative Efficacy and Information Seeking: The BCA correlated positively with individuals’ perceived participative efficacy (the belief that one’s personal contribution matters to the group’s success) and active information-seeking behaviors regarding social and political issues.

Discriminant and Criterion Validity

The scale successfully demonstrated discriminant and criterion-related validity against opposing socio-political ideologies, ideological extremity, and affective markers:

• System Justification and Social Dominance: Consistent with theoretical predictions, the BCA exhibited statistically significant negative correlations with the Economic System Justification (ESJ) scale (Jost & Thompson, 2000; Caricati, 2008). In contexts examining economic inequality, Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and support for economic inequality were consistently negatively correlated with mobilization scores.
• Political Orientation and Issue Extremity: Across both Italian and British samples, political orientation exhibited a consistent negative association with collective action readiness (with progressive positions showing higher base mobilization rates), while absolute ideological extremity (the degree to which an individual holds a firm, non-neutral stance on an issue) displayed a robust positive correlation with both normative and non-normative BCA scores.
• Affective Predictors (Anger vs. Contempt): Divergent emotional pathways validated the subscale bifurcation. Discrete emotion analyses revealed that group-based anger functioned as the strongest emotional predictor of Normative Activism. In contrast, contempt—an emotion reflecting total moral disengagement and system delegitimization—was uniquely linked to a greater willingness to engage in Non-Normative Activism.

Reliability

The internal consistency of the Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale was evaluated using both classical test theory metrics (Cronbach’s alpha, α) and modern psychometric indices (McDonald’s omega total, ω_t), demonstrating high reliability across exploratory, confirmatory, and cross-national validation phases.

Exploratory Phase Reliability Estimates

During initial exploratory factor testing across national cohorts, internal consistency estimates remained uniformly strong:

• Normative Activism Subscale: Cronbach’s α = .83 in the Italian sample; α = .87 in the UK sample.
• Non-Normative Activism Subscale: Cronbach’s α = .76 in the Italian sample; α = .82 in the UK sample.
• Full Composite Scale: Cronbach’s α = .82 in the Italian sample; α = .88 in the UK sample.

Confirmatory Phase Reliability Estimates

In the subsequent confirmatory validation phase, both Cronbach’s alpha and McDonald’s omega total indices confirmed excellent internal structural reliability across dimensions:

• Normative Activism Subscale: α = .89, ω = .89
• Non-Normative Activism Subscale: α = .84, ω = .84
• Total BCA Scale: α = .87, ω = .87

These values demonstrate that the retained items within each factor share high common variance and measure their target constructs with minimal measurement error.

Factor Analysis

The internal dimensionality of the BCA was established through a sequential psychometric pipeline consisting of Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and multi-group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

The initial pool of 12 candidate items was derived from a systematic review of extant collective action, activism, and civic participation literature. When subjected to PCA and EFA:

• In the Italian sample, initial mathematical extraction indicated three components with eigenvalues > 1.0. However, Cattell’s scree plot analysis revealed a clear point of inflection after the second component, indicating that a two-factor structure was the most parsimonious and theoretically coherent model.
• In the UK sample, both the Kaiser-Guttman eigenvalue criterion and the scree test unequivocally supported a two-factor solution.
• Item loading evaluations revealed that one item (“I would display posters or banners [e.g., on my balcony or front door] to assert my position”) failed to meet the retention threshold (loading < .40 or displaying problematic cross-loadings), leading to its exclusion from the final operationalized subscale.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

A two-factor Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted specifying latent factors for Normative Activism and Non-Normative Activism. The two-factor model exhibited fit across all standard psychometric fit benchmarks:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .99
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .99
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .05 (90% CI [.03, .07])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .02

These empirical fit indices satisfy the criteria recommended by Hu and Bentler (.95 for CFI/TLI; ≤ .06 for RMSEA; ≤ .08 for SRMR), verifying that the distinction between institutional (normative) and transgressive (non-normative) mobilization represents the primary structural architecture of collective action readiness.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Belief-aligned Collective Action Scale (BCA)
• Test Type: Original psychometric inventory / self-report questionnaire
• Constructs Assessed: Readiness for collective mobilization; Normative Activism; Non-Normative Activism
• Target Population: Human adults (18 years of age and older)
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized/online survey
• Item Count: 9 core retained validation items (evaluated from an initial 12-item exploratory pool)
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = “surely not” to 7 = “surely”
• Subscales:
  • Normative Activism: 5 retained items (e.g., signing petitions, attending rallies, contacting institutions, organizing events, distributing flyers)
  • Non-Normative Activism: 3 retained items (e.g., committing illegal protest acts, physical blockades, building occupations/squatting)
• Scoring Guidelines:
  • Subscale scores are calculated by averaging item responses within each subscale, yielding separate dimensional indices ranging from 1.0 to 7.0.
  • A composite general collective action score can be derived by computing the overall mean across all retained items.
  • Higher scores indicate greater behavioral readiness and likelihood of mobilizing to assert, defend, or advance one’s personal ideological stance.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 2023 (online first); 2024 (official journal publication).
• Authors / Copyright Holders: Carmen Cervone, Caterina Suitner, Luciana Carraro, and Anne Maass. Published by Hogrefe Publishing under copyright with the European Journal of Psychological Assessment.
• Permissions and Academic Licensing: The BCA is available free of charge for non-commercial academic research, empirical psychological studies, and classroom instructional use. Commercial utilization, integration into proprietary corporate assessment platforms, or commercial diagnostic use requires formal copyright permission from the publisher and authors.
• Fee: No fee is required for non-profit scientific investigation.

References

• Caricati, L. (2008). Verifica della struttura fattoriale della scala di giustificazione del sistema economico (ESJ) in un campione italiano. Ricerche di Psicologia, 31(2), 127–142.
• Cervone, C., Suitner, C., Carraro, L., & Maass, A. (2024). An impartial measure of collective action: Development and validation of the Belief-Aligned Collective Action Scale. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 40(3), 258–268. https://doi.org/10.1027/1015-5759/a000762
• Jost, J. T., & Thompson, E. P. (2000). Voluntary limitations on personal freedom: Hostile and benevolent sexism, and group-based social dominance orientation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 291–305. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.291
• Tausch, N., Becker, J. C., Speicher, R., Christ, O., Sagherian-Dickey, T., & Hewstone, M. (2011). Explaining radical group behavior: Developing emotion and efficacy routes to normative and nonnormative collective action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 129–148. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022728
• van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 134(4), 504–535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.4.504
• Wright, S. C., Taylor, D. M., & Moghaddam, F. M. (1990). Responding to an unequal status system: The role of personal and group-based mobility and collective action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58(6), 994–1003. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.58.6.994

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)