Conceptualizing Public Attitudes toward the Welfare State: A Comment on Hasenfeld and Rafferty

Using structural equation techniques and the LISREL software package, we successfully replicate the results of Hasenfeld and Rafferty's causal model predicting public attitudes toward welfare state programs. By taking advantage of the ability of these techniques to incorporate estimates of measurement error, we also assess the consequences of imperfect measurement in several of their key variables. Our analyses yield results that fail to support the authors' original conclusions. In addition, we believe they bring to light several problems concerning the operationalization of crucial concepts in Hasenfeld and Rafferty's (1989) model. We conclude that a more rigorous test of the authors' model would account for measurement error while using measures that correspond to their theoretical definitions.