The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire

(LCQ): Assessment of Construct

and Convergent Validity

Victoria V. Molotova , Alexander V. Molotov , Dmitry V. Kashirsky ,

Natalia V. Sabelnikova , and Elina V. Gubernatorova

Abstract This paper presents the results of the development and preliminary
assessment of the psychometric properties of the new questionnaire of legal
consciousness of an individual. In addition, we give a theoretical justification
for the questionnaire structure containing six subscales. One scale relates to the
awareness of individuals of their constitutional rights and freedoms, enshrined in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of the Russian
Federation (personal, economic, political, cultural, and social rights). The other five
scales relate to the importance of constitutional rights and freedoms for the subject.
The content validity of the tool was confirmed by expert assessments of professional
lawyers (specialists in constitutional law), as well as by the results obtained with
semi-structured interviews (N = 30). The constructive validity of the method was
established using exploratory factor analysis and tested by the confirmatory factor
analysis for a student sample (N = 100). We assessed converged validity on a sample
of students of the Law Institute of Altai State University (N = 60).

Keywords Legal awareness of a person · Degree of the significance of rights and

freedoms · Legal consciousness questionnaire [LCQ] · Construct validity ·
Convergent validity

V. V. Molotova (B) · N. V. Sabelnikova

Altai State Pedagogical University, Barnaul, Russia
e-mail: advocatemolotova@mail.ru
A. V. Molotov · D. V. Kashirsky · E. V. Gubernatorova
Altai State University, Barnaul, Russia
e-mail: Lawmaking@yandex.ru
D. V. Kashirsky
Russian State Social University, Moscow, Russia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 929
S. G. Maximova et al. (eds.), Advances in Natural, Human-Made, and Coupled
Human-Natural Systems Research, Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems 234,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75483-9_89
930 V. V. Molotova et al.

1 Introduction

Currently, the issue of security is especially relevant. This problem requires solving
a wide range of issues, such as ensuring the observance of the rights and freedoms
of each person. This goal cannot be achieved without the legal awareness of each
person.
A significant number of studies conducted by philosophers, sociologists, and
lawyers was devoted to legal awareness. Psychology also paid attention to the law
representation in the individual consciousness. The specifics of the legal conscious-
ness, its concepts, and research tools are at the center of attention of the modern
psychologist. The law regulates social relations and cannot be separated from the
subjects of social life. Therefore, psychological research can significantly contribute
to legal consciousness.
A functional-structural concept of Ratinov (1981) claims that the ambient reality is
reflected in the legal consciousness of a person in a specific way. Legal consciousness
has a particular language, a system of concepts and categories, unique criteria, and
assessment methods. A. R. Ratinov determines three functions of legal conscious-
ness: (1) cognitive, (2) evaluative, and (3) regulatory. According to Ratinov, all
forms of mental reflection of the legal life of society can be attributed to the legal
consciousness (Ratinov 1986).
According to Enikeev (2005), legal consciousness can express itself in the motive
of legally significant behavior as a manifestation of solidarity with law, general legal
principles, guidelines, and values, or by the manifestation of legal negativism, and
the denial of legal values formed at a certain stage of the societal development.
Baranov (1997) underlined the following aspects of legal consciousness: (1) legal
feelings, (2) legal attitudes, (3) legal experience, and (4) legal illusions. Pristanskaya
and Yutskova (1990) introduced the structure of legal consciousness including (1)
knowledge of the law, (2) ideas about law, (3) attitude to law (4) legal requirements,
(5) attitude to legal regulations. The four-component model of legal consciousness
was introduced by Shchegortsev (1981). The model contains a substantive component
which includes the following components: (1) knowledge and ideas of people about
legal phenomena; (2) an evaluative component (assessment of legal phenomena by
people); (3) a behavioral component (behavior and activities of people in right-
handed situations); and (4) an energy component (emotions and feelings of people).
Gulevich (2009a, b) defined a sense of justice as a set of social attitudes to (1)
crimes, (2) criminals, (3) law, (4) punishment, (5) law enforcement, (6) judicial
and penal systems. Our research is based on the structure of legal consciousness,
which consists of three main components: (1) cognitive (legal concepts, knowledge,
cognitive assessment of legal phenomena), (2) affective (emotional assessment of
legal phenomena), and (3) behavioral (intention to behave in a certain way in legal
situations).
We consider the legal consciousness of individuals as a reflection of their legal
norms and values. The psychological structure of legal consciousness includes the
The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire (LCQ): Assessment … 931

following elements: (1) awareness of the subject of basic rights and freedoms (objec-
tive legal norms); (2) significance of particular rights and freedoms for the individual;
and (3) peculiarities of the subject’s behavior and activities within the legal field,
(compliance, violation or denial of legal norms).
The analysis of secondary literature on legal consciousness revealed a lack of tools
for assessing the legal consciousness of individuals. Primarily, it is due to insuffi-
ciently developed theoretical and methodological grounds for the related research.
The developed tools assess specific aspects of legal consciousness and its particular
components: (1) cognitive (Kuznetsova 2008; Gulevich, 2009a, b; Sorokina et al.
2012) and (2) emotional and behavioral (Beznosov 2004; Khashchenko and Shpak
2013; Khashchenko et al. 2011). Nonetheless, there are no valid and reliable tools for
assessing the level of consciousness of basic rights and freedoms and the degree of
significance of the initial legal values, acting as guidelines for individuals’ behavior
and their actions in a legally significant situation.
In our opinion, the psychological analysis of the legal consciousness of individ-
uals should be based on the following provisions: (1) the legal consciousness of
individuals is more related to the essence of law than to individual legal norms and
laws; (2) analyzing the structure of an individual’s legal consciousness and evaluating
its qualitative characteristics, the researcher should, first of all, take into account its
subjective (appraisal) side expressed in the personal attitude of the subject to the
basic legal principles; (3) various fields of legal consciousness of an individual are
directly related to the objective legal system-branches of law and specific types of
legal relations reflected in international acts and national constitutions. In fact, these
legal acts are nothing more than the universal human values officially established by
the legislator.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to create a theoretical model and evaluate
the psychometric properties of the questionnaire, which reveals the integral structure
of the legal consciousness of individuals. First of all, the developed tool aims to
measure the level of consciousness of the subject of constitutional human rights
and freedoms. Secondly, it emphasizes the importance of fundamental rights and
freedoms that underlie the formation of law and current legal regulation.

2 Materials and Methods

We took the following steps to develop the Legal Consciousness Questionnaire

[LCQ]:
1. Theoretical analysis of relevant scholarship on legal issues and development of
diagnostic tools on a given topic;
2. Analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Constitution of
the Russian Federation;
3. Development and conduct of semi-structured interviews;
4. Development of the new questionnaire structure and expert assessment of items;
932 V. V. Molotova et al.

5. Empirical validation of the test, that is, the analysis of the questionnaire structure
and internal consistency of its subscales and qualitative analysis of the data
obtained;
6. Assessment of convergent validity of the tool.
The questionnaire is based on legal maxims related to values and norms objectively
established by the international community in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (General Assembly of the United Nations 1948) and subsequently reflected in
the constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation (Russian
Federation 1993). Such tools express the rights and freedoms of citizens existing at a
particular stage of cultural-historical development of society as a kind of “ideal form”
(Vygotsky 2001) to develop the individual’s legal consciousness. Therefore, these
tools can serve as an essential objective criterion for studying the nature of individ-
uals’ legal consciousness, resulting from the internalization of rights and freedoms
accepted in society (Molotova 2018). Consequently, the first stage of our research is
devoted to the theoretical analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
the Constitution of the Russian Federation, aimed at reconstructing the main areas of
the legal regulation that control legal relations of people in modern Russian society.
Next, we created and conducted a semi-structured interview (N = 30) aimed at
identifying the qualitative characteristics of legal awareness, manifested in (1) legal
literacy (awareness), (2) the level of understanding of the law, and (3) the varying
degree of significance of constitutional rights and freedoms for individuals. Thus, the
law is assumed to be an empirical phenomenon that exists at the levels of individuals’
consciousness and behavior.
The first version of the LCQ was developed based on further generalizations of
interview responses. After that, lawyers (experts in the field of constitutional law)
evaluated the draft questionnaire to confirm the adequacy of its wording to the concept
under study.
Next, the LCQ was empirically validated using exploratory factor analysis and
verified by confirmatory factor analysis on a student sample (N = 100).
The participants were 60 male and 40 female students aged 17–19 (M = 18.24,
SD = 0.56). Students were invited to participate in the study, convinced that they
could leave at any time. Participants were asked about the nature of the study after
completing and returning the paper-and-pencil survey.
Finally, we checked the validity structure of the new tool. For this purpose, we used
a standard procedure for analyzing the relationships of this new tool with currently
existing tools that measure similar constructs. The most common assessment tools for
measuring an individual’s legal consciousness in Russian science are the following:
(1) the measure of everyday justice by L. A. Yasyukova, (2) “The level of justice
development” questionnaire by Gulevich, (3) the “Legal awareness of the penal
system by employees” questionnaire by Evstafieva and Krasnik, and (4) the instru-
ment for the professional study of concepts, developed by Gornostaev (as sited in
Yevstafeeva 2015). The tools listed above measure the individual’s legal conscious-
ness at two different levels—basic and professional. Therefore, the “Legal aware-
ness of the penal system by employees” a questionnaire by Evstafieva, Krasnik, and
The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire (LCQ): Assessment … 933

Gornostaev’s tool for the professional study of concepts were developed to measure
professional legal consciousness of the legal system employers. In contrast, the tools
of L. A. Yasyukova and O. A. Gulevich were aimed at the evaluation of the legal
consciousness of the ordinary people. Since the LCQ was created to study the level
of legal consciousness of an ordinary individual, in our study, we chose the tools of
L. A. Yasyukova and O. A. Gulevich for comparison with the LCQ scales.
Participants of this stage of the study were students of the Law School (N = 60),
aged 17–23 (M = 19.3, SD = 1.7). They filled out questionnaires posted on Google
forms via the internet. At the beginning of the survey, they signed an informed consent
form and were free to withdraw at any time.

3 Results

3.1 The Theoretical Basis for the Scale Structure

The analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (General Assembly of

the United Nations 1948) and the current Constitution of the Russian Federation
(Russian Federation 1993), as well as the works of prominent experts in the field of
the theory of constitutional law (Baglay 2007; Kozlova and Kutafin 2006), allowed
us to identify five primary areas of legal regulation:
1. Personal Rights (the right to life and health, freedom of speech and thought,
freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, the right to privacy, and the right to
freedom of movement)
2. Economic Rights (the right to own, use and dispose of a property based on the
right of ownership, the right to freely dispose of the ability to work, and the right
to run business activities);
3. Political Rights (the right to elect and be elected to the authorities, the right to
participate in rallies and processions, the right to join trade unions, freedom of
peaceful assembly and association, and the right of access to public service)
4. Social Rights (the right to social security, free medical care, and education,
pensions, guarantees, and benefits for the poor, disabled people, children without
parental care, and minorities);
5. Cultural Rights (the right to freedom of artistic expression and creativity, the
right to education, and access to cultural heritage).
Consequently, the analysis of legal regulation constituted a five-factor hypothet-
ical model of the questionnaire based on the theoretical ideas about the principles
and mechanisms of legal regulation in the basic areas of life and social interaction
of individuals. The structure of the questionnaire allows us to perform a holistic
assessment of the legal consciousness of individuals.
Next, we added a scale of consciousness of constitutional rights and freedoms
related to the cognitive component of the personal sense of justice, measuring the
934 V. V. Molotova et al.

level of legal literacy of the subjects. Adding this scale to our questionnaire, we
made it possible to reveal the coherence of the emotional and cognitive components
of legal consciousness by comparing the scores that referred to one’s knowledge of
certain rights and freedoms and the scores showing their significance for that person.

3.2 Development of the Item Pool and the Extension

of the Scale Structure

Precise points for measuring the a priori five-factor definition were also developed
based on the analysis of the universal Declaration of Human Rights, the current
Constitution of the Russian Federation, and publications of the leading experts in
constitutional law. These questions were included in a semi-structured interview
(N = 30) aimed at assessing legal literacy (awareness), the level of understanding
of the law, and the significance of constitutional rights and freedoms for individuals.
The respondents were asked to express their attitude to the existing constitutional
norms and indicate how necessary and significant they are in social interaction and
whether it is acceptable to cancel or restrict their rights and freedoms established by
law.
Analysis of the semi-structured interview results allowed us to introduce a general
idea of law as an empirical phenomenon that reflects the subjective reality of legal
consciousness. We used the results obtained for the wording of the questionnaire
items. Then, experts in constitutional law assessed the adequacy of the test questions.
As a result of this work, we developed a 56-point questionnaire.

3.3 The Measure

The designed LCQ contains 56 items, representing six subscales:

1. Awareness of Rights and Freedoms;
2. Personal Significance of Personal Rights and Freedoms;
3. Personal Significance of Economic Rights and Freedoms;
4. Personal Significance of Political Rights and Freedoms;
5. Personal Significance of Social Rights and Freedoms;
6. Personal Significance of Cultural Rights and Freedoms.
According to the instructions, respondents were asked to read these statements
and express their agreement with them on a seven-point Likert scale. Below, we gave
examples of elements related to the LCQ scales.
Subscale 1 “Awareness of Rights and Freedoms” (ten items) assesses the respon-
dents’ awareness of their rights and freedoms (whether a person hears about them for
The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire (LCQ): Assessment … 935

the first time or, on the contrary, encountered these phrases before and fully under-
stands them). The statements related to this scale are divided into two types (two
statements for each of the five legal regulation areas).
The first type of statements is formulated in a general form and does not disclose
the content of the legal regulation area for assessment, allowing a researcher an
opportunity to reveal the general level of understanding of the relevant categories.
For instance, “I am well aware of my personal rights” (item one, the sphere of personal
rights regulation).
The second type of statements relates directly to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the Constitution of the Russian Federation. These statements
specify the content of each of the five areas of legal regulation. For instance, “I am
well aware that every person has the right to own, use and dispose of property on the
basis of property rights; the right to freely dispose of one’s ability to work, the right
to conduct entrepreneurial activities” (item 18, the sphere of regulation of economic
rights), etc.
Subscales 2–5 evaluate the subject’s attitude toward the content of specific rights
related to various areas of legal regulation and social interaction. Each of these scales
contains five types of statements accounting for the following:
1. Significance for the subject of a particular group of rights and freedoms (e.g., “it
is vital for me that no one can interfere in my private and family life, violate the
privacy of correspondence, telephone conversations”);
2. Willingness to restrict the right in order to serve the public good (e.g., to restrict
the personal right to freedom of thought and speech, and permit to censor the
internet to protect children from harmful information);
3. Willingness to restrict their rights in exchange for material remuneration or social
guarantees (e.g., to waive the right to elect representatives to government bodies
for material remuneration, or abandon the ownership of the real estate in favor
of a contract of social renting real estate, decent wages, free medical care, and
job security);
4. Willingness to waive or restrict rights in favor of a more significant category of
rights (e.g., to waive the right to free medical care or the right to receive a pension
to guarantee smooth-running business);
5. Inadmissibility of restriction of rights and freedoms or the denial of certain
rights and freedoms (subjects under no circumstances consider the possibility
of restricting or waiving their rights).
Subscale 2 “Personal Significance of Personal Rights and Freedoms” (14 items)
assesses the subject’s attitude to the content of personal rights and freedoms. For
instance, “It is important for me that people are born with equal rights and freedoms,
regardless of the family and the conditions in which they were born” (item three).
Subscale 3 “Personal Significance of Economic Rights and Freedoms,” containing
four items, evaluates the subject’s attitude to the content of economic rights and
freedoms (e.g., item 21, “Under no circumstances am I willing to give up or limit
my ownership”).
936 V. V. Molotova et al.

Subscale 4 “Personal Significance of Political Rights and Freedoms” (eight items),

assesses the subject’s attitude to the content of political rights and freedoms. For
instance, “I am ready to give up the right to elect the authorities for remuneration”
(item 29).
Subscale 5 “Personal Significance of Social Rights and Freedoms,” consisting of
six items, evaluates the subject’s attitude to the content of social rights and freedoms
(e.g., item 43, “Under no circumstances am I ready to give up my cultural rights”).
Subscale 6 “Personal Significance of Cultural Rights and Freedoms,” composed
of 11 items, evaluates the subject’s attitude to the content of cultural rights and
freedoms. For instance, “It is very important for me that I have the right to free
education and health insurance” (item 46).
The developed measure was further factorized and evaluated for internal consis-
tency.

3.4 Construct Validity

The Kaiser-Meier-Olkin [KMO] Measure of Sampling Adequacy and the Bartlett’s

test of Sphericity indicated the suitability of the data for the structure detection
(KMO = 0.705, χ2 = 5,639.672, df = 1,540, p ≤ 0.0001). We carried out an
Exploratory Factor Analysis [EFA] (principal component method, Varimax axis
rotation) for empirical confirmation of the questionnaire structure. In general, it
confirmed six factors that had a saturation of 61.76% of the total variance.
However, some items of the initial version of the questionnaire had low loads on
the extracted factors. These items were dropped, and the measure was reduced to 34
statements which formed six subscales:
1. Awareness of Rights and Freedoms (ten items);
2. Personal Significance of Personal Rights and Freedoms Subscale (five items);
3. Personal Significance of Economic Rights and Freedoms Subscale (five items);
4. Personal Significance of Political Rights and Freedoms Subscale (five items);
5. Personal Significance of Social Rights and Freedoms (four items);
6. Personal Significance of Cultural Rights and Freedoms (five items).
Next, we evaluated the questionnaire factor structure (34 items) using Confir-
matory Factor Analysis [CFA] (N = 100). Subsequently, we assessed the factor
structure of the newly developed questionnaire using CFA (n = 100). Statistical
indicators showed an acceptable model fit: χ2 = 748.89, df = 455, p ≤ 0.0001;
CFI = 0.90, RMSEA = 0.08, LO 90 = 0.07, HI 90 = 0.09, TLI = 0.87. Therefore,
the factor solution proved the appropriateness of the developed tool for assessing
the significance of rights and freedoms for the subject and their awareness of the
rights and freedoms regulated by the laws established in society. A more detailed
description of the LCQ construct validity testing is given in the paper by Molotova
et al. (2020).
The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire (LCQ): Assessment … 937

3.5 Convergent Validity

Convergent validity of the LCQ was assessed with a sample of students of the Law
Institute of Altai State University (N = 60). The students’ scores on the LCQ
subscales were correlated with their scores on the two tools aimed to diagnose
justice—the tools of Yasyukova (2000) and Gulevich (2009a, b).
The questionnaire of L. A. Yasyukova contains 13 items. The respondents have
to choose one of the three possible answers. The tool contains the integral scale
measuring the general level of legal consciousness as well as the level of legal
consciousness in three specific areas: (1) mode of life, (2) business, and (3) civil
sphere. Besides, the questionnaire provides an opportunity to assess the level of
legal knowledge of the respondents.
The tool of O. A. Gulevich consists of four unfinished sentences and offers a
choice of four completion options, one of which is open: respondents can write their
ideas. As a result of the assessment, we can indicate one of the three possible levels
of an individual’s legal consciousness: (1) law obedience, (2) law enforcement, (3)
law-making (Tapp and Kohlberg 1971).
We assume that the awareness of rights and freedoms reflects the well-developed
self-identity of a person. Therefore, we expected that the LCQ scales aimed at
revealing a subject’s awareness of personal, economic, political, social, and cultural
rights would correlate with the general indicator of legal consciousness scores using
the tool of L. A. Yasyukova and the level of development of justice measured with the
tool of Gulevich. Moreover, given that these tools are based on theoretical construc-
tions with different values, levels of legal consciousness (subjective morality and
objective societal, legal regulation), we expected that the LCQ scales would nega-
tively correlate with the former and positively correlate with the latter. We also
anticipated correlations between the scores on scales to reveal the significance of
personal, economic, political, social, and cultural rights and freedoms measured by
the LCQ and the scores on self-awareness in the lifestyle, business, and civil scales
of Yasyukova’s tool.
Yasyukova’s scales
The data obtained with the Yasyukova’s scales showed that the respondents’ scores
on legal consciousness (M = 15.57, SD = 2.63) referred to the second (medium)
level (Fig. 1).
Figure 1 shows that, on average, students have a medium level of legal awareness
in lifestyle and business, a low level of legal awareness in the civil sphere, and a low
level of legal knowledge.
The correlational analysis results presented in Tables 1 and 2 indicate the negative
correlation between the scores on the integral scale of the Yasyukova’s questionnaire
and scores on the significance of social rights and freedoms measured by the LCQ
(r = –0.236, p ≤ 0.06).
938 V. V. Molotova et al.

5.00 4.90

4.50
4.00 3.63
3.50 3.13
3.00
2.50
2.00
2.00
1.50
Life Business Civil Legal knowledge

Fig. 1 The students’ scores on the specific areas of legal consciousness (Yasyukova’s scales) Source
Compiled by the authors

Table 1 Table of correlations between the Awareness of the LCQ Rights and Freedoms subscales
and Yasyukova’s scales
Yasyukova’s scales Awareness of Rights and Freedoms (LCQ)
Personal Economic Political Cultural Social Overall score
Legal consciousness 0.050 0.001 0.008 0.176 –0.115 0.028
Lifestyle –0.044 0.040 –0.113 –0.052 –0.074 –0.057
Business 0.045 0.158 0.145 0.147 0.026 0.118
Civil sphere 0.205 0.082 0.085 0.049 –0.100 0.058
Legal knowledge 0.091 0.032 0.121 0.012 –0.101 0.024
Source Compiled by the authors

Table 2 Table of correlations between the LCQ Significance of Rights and Freedoms subscales
and the Yasyukova’s scale
Yasyukova’s scales Significance of Rights and Freedoms (LCQ)
Personal Economic Political Cultural Social Overall score
Legal consciousness –0.111 –0.078 0.132 0.161 –0.236* –0.037
Lifestyle 0.013 0.102 0.148 0.154 –0.171 0.076
Business –0.045 –0.079 0.135 –0.081 –0.017 –0.017
Civil sphere 0.164 0.147 0.063 0.144 –0.060 0.135
Legal knowledge –0.210 –0.037 –0.015 0.092 –0.207 –0.118
Note *p ≤ 0.05
Source Compiled by the authors
The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire (LCQ): Assessment … 939

2.00 1.92
1.80
1.60
1.40
1.20
0.92 0.93
1.00
0.80
0.60
0.40
0.20
0.00
Law obedience Law enforcement Law making

Fig. 2 The students’ scores on Gulevich’s questionnaire. Source Compiled by the authors

Gulevich’s questionnaire
The average scores on the scales of the questionnaire of O. A. Gulevich show that
the participants had demonstrated low levels of perceived law obedience (Fig. 2).
The correlational analysis results, shown in Tables 3 and 4, indicate the negative
correlation between the level of law obedience scores on the Gulevich’s tool and the
significance of cultural rights and freedoms measured by the LCQ (r = –0.288, p ≤
0.026).
Table 5 presents the results of the correlation analysis of Yasyukova’s scales
and Gulevich’s questionnaire. One can see that there were no significant corre-
lations between them, except for one case. The legal knowledge scores on the
Yasyukova’s scales negatively correlate with legal awareness scores on the Gulevich’s
questionnaire.

Table 3 Table of correlations between the LCQ Awareness of Rights and Freedoms subscales and
the subscales of the Gulevich’s questionnaire
The Gulevich’s Awareness of Rights and Freedoms (LCQ)
questionnaire scales Personal Economic Political Cultural Social Overall score
Law obedience –0.138 –0.007 0.039 –0.082 0.012 –0.037
Law enforcement 0.071 0.046 0.074 0.049 –0.072 0.032
Law-making 0.081 –0.050 –0.215 0.010 0.071 –0.018
Source Compiled by the authors
940 V. V. Molotova et al.

Table 4 Table of correlations between the LCQ Significance of Rights and Freedoms subscales
and the subscales of the Gulevich’s questionnaire
The Gulevich’s Significance of Rights and Freedoms (LCQ)
questionnaire scales Personal Economic Political Cultural Social Overall score
Law obedience –0.141 –0.083 –0.031 –0.288* 0.038 –0.152
Law enforcement 0.049 0.205 –0.109 0.152 –0.047 0.065
Law-making 0.047 –0.096 0.083 0.169 0.067 0.093
Note *p ≤ 0.05
Source Compiled by the authors

Table 5 Correlations
The The Gulevich’s questionnaire scales
between the Yasyukova’s
Yasyukova’s Law obedience Law Law-making
scales and the Gulevich’s
scales enforcement
questionnaire scales
Legal –0.089 0.026 0.048
consciousness
Lifestyle 0.100 –0.025 –0.033
Business 0.001 –0.076 –0.038
Civil sphere –0.088 –0.028 0.000
Legal 0.202 0.014 –0.294*
knowledge
Note *p ≤ 0.05
Source Compiled by the authors

4 Discussion

The purpose of the study was to develop a tool for measuring the individual’s legal
consciousness in the following areas: (1) awareness of the rights and freedoms
adopted in society, (2) significance of basic rights and freedoms that are the basis
of legal regulation accepted in the society for the individual. Moreover, we aimed
to assess its psychometric properties. At the first step, we performed a preliminary
analysis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the current Constitution
of the Russian Federation to highlight the basic rights and freedoms of the citizens,
which represent an objective (“intrapsychic,” according to L. S. Vygotsky) form
of legal consciousness. Five fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms were
identified as five hypothetical factors of the model. Together with the factor named
Awareness of Constitutional Rights and Freedoms, those factors were accounted for
a six-factor questionnaire model.
Next, the initial version of the questionnaire was developed and subjected to
discussion in the form of a semi-structured interview. The interview revealed the
difficulties ordinary people face in understanding professional lawyers’ the wording
of items taken directly from the constitution. Consequently, we improved the wording
The Legal Consciousness Questionnaire (LCQ): Assessment … 941

of the items by making them clear for an ordinary person without losing a “letter
and spirit of the law” in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the current
Constitution of the Russian Federation. Then, two professional lawyers—experts in
constitutional law, assessed these items. As a result of this work, we designed a 56
item LCQ.
Subsequently, the questionnaire was empirically validated. The proposed factor
structure was generally confirmed using EFA and CFA. We omitted items with low
load or double loads. The CFA confirmed the construct validity of the questionnaire.
Evaluation of the convergent validity of the developed questionnaire showed that
some LCQ scales negatively correlated with the scales of the other two tools also
aimed at the study of legal consciousness (Yasyukova’s tool and Gulevich’s tool). We
assume the following explanation of the results obtained. The individual’s conscious-
ness is a complex systemic formation, and the techniques presented in our study
reflect its different aspects. One can see that we dealt with two different constructs:
the first, reflected in the concepts of L. A. Yasyukova and O. A. Gulevich, referred
to the understanding of the law or the availability of legal knowledge; the second
one concerned with the awareness of legal issues and evaluation of different legal
situations (LCQ methodology). Both of them could be included in the structure
of the individual’s legal consciousness. Nonetheless, the connection between these
two components is complex and possibly non-linear. Therefore, this phenomenon
requires further comprehensive research.
The analysis of the tools of L. A. Yasyukova and O. A. Gulevich showed that they
were based on different concepts of justice, determining opposite ways of assessing
the levels of an individual’s legal consciousness. Consequently, L. A. Yasyukova
determines legal consciousness as a system of representation based on the under-
standing of the role of law and the comprehension of legal norms in the regu-
lation of social relations (including those between the individual and the govern-
ment) influencing one’s attitudes to these norms (Yasyukova 2000). The concept of
L. A. Yasynkova considers the orientation towards moral principles as a low level
of legal consciousness named “legal nihilism.” On the contrary, the concept of O.
M. Gulevich is based on L. Kolberg and J. Tapp’s moral theory. According to this
concept, the highest level of legal consciousness is marked by compliance with one’s
moral and ethical standards in situations when legal regulation is considered unfair.
This fact explains the negative correlation between legal knowledge (measured the
Yasyukova’s scales) and legal awareness (measured by Gulevich’s questionnaire).
Despite the common usage of both tools in many Russian studies, they were not
validated before. However, the traditional procedures for assessing validity are hardly
suitable for these methods due to their basis on a qualitative methodology.
On the other hand, the absence of expected relationships between the LCQ and
the two other questionnaires employed in the study also might be explained. The
results obtained with Yasyukova’s and Gulevich’s measures showed a low level of
legal consciousness of the study participants. Thus, the subjects might not cope with
the LCQ methodology, requiring a certain level of development of a common legal
culture and legal knowledge due to their low level of legal awareness. Then, further
LCQ validation in a broader variety of samples is needed.
942 V. V. Molotova et al.

5 Conclusion

To summarize, the study introduced a theoretical model of the LCQ and described
its preliminary empirical validation. The findings can be considered the first step in
the development and validation of an individual’s legal consciousness.
Currently, the research on the improvement of the psychometric characteristics of
the LCQ measure is in progress. We plan to continue re-wording the dropped items by
splitting them into smaller units to make them more comprehensible to respondents.
Another direction of further research is a validation of the questionnaire on a wider
variety of samples. Also, we plan to continue the evaluation of the convergent and
discriminant validity of the LCQ.

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