New Method Approbation for the Study of Legal Consciousness for Law Enforcement Officers

The work is devoted to the development of a new diagnostic tool for the study of legal consciousness as an essential competence of law enforcement officers as part of solving practical problems of their professional-psychological selection and accompaniment. The author’s “Scale of legal consciousness” (46 questions) was developed; the emphasis was placed on revealing the commitment to “conventional” values, as opposed to both egoistic and “universal” values. The research sample: the personnel of the National Guard of the Russian Federation (504 people). High one-step reliability (α=0,824) of the new Legal Awareness Scale was revealed; the distribution of the indicator corresponds to normal. Correlations of high significance and expected sign with personality variables (L-Profile, MLO Adaptivity), with indicators of propensity to addiction (“ODA-2010” questionnaire) moderate positive relations with results on intellectual tests were revealed. Thus, satisfactory psychometric properties of the new Law Consciousness Scale were confirmed, and the expediency of its further validation with the prospect of introduction into the practice of psychological support of law enforcement agencies was substantiated.