Compare methods

	Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Measure	Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale
Field	Political Psychology	Social Psychology
Family	Latent structure	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1997	1981
Originator	Stanley Feldman & Karen Stenner	Bob Altemeyer
Type	Indirect dispositional measure of authoritarianism	Self-report Likert scale
Seminal source	Feldman, S., & Stenner, K. (1997). Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism. Political Psychology, 18(4), 741-770.	Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. University of Manitoba Press.
Aliases	Child-Rearing Values Authoritarianism Scale, Feldman-Stenner Authoritarianism Items, Parenting-Values Authoritarianism Measure, Four-Item Child-Rearing Authoritarianism Battery	RWA
Related	3	4
Summary	The child-rearing values measure, introduced by Stanley Feldman and Karen Stenner in 1997, gauges an authoritarian predisposition indirectly by asking which qualities respondents most want to instill in children. Each item forces a choice between an autonomy-oriented quality (such as independence or curiosity) and a conformity-oriented quality (such as obedience or good manners). Because the questions never mention politics, the resulting four-item index measures a deep disposition toward order and sameness without contaminating it with the political attitudes it is meant to explain, avoiding the tautology that plagued earlier authoritarianism scales.	The Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA) is a self-report measure developed by Bob Altemeyer in 1981 to assess individual differences in authoritarian attitudes, including submission to established authorities, adherence to conventional norms, and aggression toward those perceived to violate social conventions. The scale measures three core dimensions: authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism. It has become a cornerstone of research on authoritarianism, political attitudes, and intergroup prejudice.