Abstract

A major policy defect in the much Orchestrated phenomenon of corruption in Nigeria, by both governments and the mass media, is the dearth of objective psychological tools for measuring and predicting corrupt behaviour and other forms of psychological malaise. The development and validation of Extravagant Life-style Assessment Scale (ELAS) is one the bold attempt at remediating an aspect of the policy defect in view of the fact that extravagant life style has implication for the manifestation of corrupt and fraudulent behaviour. Using literature review, interviews and focused group discussions, 79 items were generated. Through the processes of panel of expert selection, face validity check and statistical analysis, the 79 items were reduced to 34. The scale was administered to 600 participants (M=378, F=222) comprising banker’s convicted and nonconvicted for fraud, and nonconvicted nonbankers. The normative scores obtained were: convicted bankers = 46.55, nonconvicted bankers = 33.31 and nonbankers = 39.79 comparing the scores of the groups with ANOVA, the result showed that ELAS significantly differentiated the three groups, F (2, 597) = 26.94, P< .01, with the convicted bankers having the highest mean score in extravagant life-style. The reliability coefficients obtained were; cronbachalpha internal consistency = .90, split-half = .77 and odd-even = .81. Divergent validity coefficients of .32 and .18 were obtained by correlating ELAS with the Psychoticism sub-scale of EPQ (Adult) and thePsychopathic Deviate Scale respectively. Factor analysing ELAS with principal component and varimax rotation was computed in order to establish its factorial validity. Eight factors with eigenvalues above 1 were extracted. The factors, which account for 60.2% of the total variance includes the need for: investment, gambling, good life, religiosity, social activities, family and spiritualism. The predictive value of the scale in preventing corrupt and fraudulent behaviours was emphasized.

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