Public thinking about poverty: why it matters and how to measure it

Meeting the Millennium Development Goals partly depends on not‐profit organizations raising more funds, which in turn depends on having reliable and valid assessments of where donor and recipient perceptions are out‐of‐line. Across samples from a developed economy Australia (n = 754), and a developing economy Malaŵi (n = 387), we explored the factor structure of the ‘Causes of Third‐World Poverty Questionnaire’ (CTWPQ, D. Harper and colleagues, 1990). In addition to four core factors suggested through an original (N = 89) sample from the UK (Blame [1] the Poor, [2] Nature, [3] Third World governments, and [4] International Exploitation), combined Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) differentiate a possible fifth factor germane to the social marketing of aid, blame [5] Conflict. Australians and Malaŵians differed significantly on all five factors, with Malaŵians blaming poverty more on situations and less on the poor themselves, compared to Australian counterparts. Our findings are tentative because the CTWPQ item pool requires expanding to represent underlying constructs more fully. Nonetheless, instruments like the CTWPQ can in future be used to identify and monitor in‐context psychosocial barriers to donation, enabling not‐profit marketing organizations to raise funds more efficiently and effectively. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.