Janet T. Spence

A short version of the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS).

A short (25-item) version of the Spence-Helmreich (1972) Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) is presented. Correlations between scores on the short and the full (55-item) version for groups of male and female students and groups of their parents were.95 or above. The results of a factor analysis and part-whole correlations also indicated the similarity of the two forms. Normative data for the student and parent samples are described.

Gender-related traits and gender ideology: evidence for a multifactorial theory.

Male (n = 95) and female (n = 221) college students were given 2 measures of gender-related personality traits, the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire, and 3 measures of sex role attitudes. Correlations between the personality and the attitude measures were traced to responses to the pair of negatively correlated BSRI items, masculine and feminine, thus confirming a multifactorial approach to gender, as opposed to a unifactorial gender schema theory.

Instrumental and Expressive Traits, Trait Stereotypes, and Sexist Attitudes: What Do They Signify?

College students rated the typical male and female student and themselves on 22 instrumental (I) and 16 expressive (E) items from the PAQ (Spence & Helmreich, 1978) and the BSRI (Bem, 1974), as well as on the BSRI items “masculine” and “feminine.” They also completed measures of gender stereotypes and sexist attitudes. Significant gender stereotypes were found on all but two I and E items in both genders. Significant gender differences in self-report were found on all the E items but on only 41% of the I items, confirming our hypotheses that societal changes have led women to develop more agentic self-conceptions. The pattern of relationships found between the self-report, stereotype, and attitude measures supports the utility of a multidimensional approach to gender. Responses to the items “masculine” and “feminine” confirm the implications of our hypothesis that these items primarily assess mens and womens basic sense of gender identity.

Masculine Instrumentality and Feminine Expressiveness: Their Relationships with Sex Role Attitudes and Behaviors

Data from the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) Masculinity and Femininity scales have led to the hypothesis that androgynous individuals are more “behaviorally flexible” than others, manifesting both masculine and feminine role behaviors. Sex-role androgyny is also said to have other beneficial consequences such as high self esteem. The content of these instruments, however, is largely confined to socially desirable instrumental (masculine) and expressive (feminine) personality traits. A review of the literature indicates that these abstract trait dimensions have only minimal relationships with sex-role attitudes and sex-role behaviors not tapping instrumentality and expressiveness, and provide little support for the general behavioral flexibility hypothesis. Although PAQ and BSRI findings cannot be generalized to sex-role behaviors in general, the literature suggests that instrumentality and expressiveness per se have important implications. Appreciation of their contributions may be advanced more rapidly if these trait dimensions are disentangled from global concepts of sex-roles or masculinity, femininity, and androgyny.

THE ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN SCALE AND ATTITUDE CHANGE IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

To determine cohort changes in gender-role attitudes, responses to the 15-item form of the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence & Helmreich, 1972a, 1978) were compared for students at the same university tested in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992. In both males and females, members of the 1992 cohort were the most egalitarian, and members of the 1972 cohort were the least egalitarian. In all groups, women were significantly less traditional in their attitudes than men. As has been found in previous studies, detailed analyses of the data from the 1992 cohort revealed that the scale was unifactorial, but that the score distributions were skewed. There was also some indication of ceiling effects at the egalitarian end of the scale, particularly in women. The implications of these latter results for the usefulness of the AWS in current research were explored.

Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender-Related Traits: A Conceptual Analysis and Critique of Current Research

Publisher Summary The research employing the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ), and other instruments containing separate M and F scales has fundamentally been inspired by a shift in societal attitudes, shared by most social scientists, toward a more egalitarian view of the status of women and the relationships between the sexes. Substitution of traditional bipolar theories with the proposition that masculinity and femininity are independent dimensions and that androgyny, a combination of both, is associated with greater psychological competency than sex-typing held out the promise that a society, in which roles are not differentially assigned to men and women, except as dictated by biology, is both feasible and desirable. The chapter discusses that the multidimensional nature of sex-role and other gender-related phenomena is also beginning to be recognized. Although gender identity is essentially dimorphic, the general statement that masculine and feminine attributes and behaviors cannot or do not coexist has been effectively refuted. Androgyny, defined as the possession of substantial numbers of desirable attributes and response dispositions currently stereotyped as masculine and feminine, or as an indifference to sex-role standards that leads the person to behave according to his or her individual predilections may turn out to have the benefits assigned to it.

A psychometric analysis of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire

The psychometric properties of the Personal Attributes Questionnaire were examined in independent samples of male and female high school students, college students, and adults. In each of the six samples a two-factor structure (masculinity/instrumentality and femininity/expressivity) paralleling the empirically derived scales was found. Additional factor analyses of negative masculine and feminine traits were reported. Discriminant analyses revealed highly significant differentiation between the sexes. The reliabilities (Cronbach alpha) of the unit-weighted scales in each sample were also satisfactory.

Psychological determinants of health and performance: The tangled web of desirable and undesirable characteristics.

Correlations were determined for male (n = 225) and female (n = 242) college students between sets of undesirable personality traits (anxiety, stress reactivity, anger, and alienation) and desirable personality traits (instrumentality, achievement strivings, and optimism measured by the Scheier-Carver [1987] Life Orientation Test), and a series of outcome variables related to health (self-reported health complaints and health maintenance behaviors and beliefs) and academic performance (academic expectations and actual grade point average). Significant correlations were found between many of the personality variables and the outcome variables. However, partial correlations revealed different relationships for the various criteria. With other variables held constant, health complaints were related to several undesirable characteristics, whereas health maintenance behaviors and beliefs were related to several desirable attributes. Only achievement strivings made an independent contribution in both sexes to the 2 measures of academic performance. The theoretical and methodological wisdom of using measures of multiple personality constructs and outcome variables is discussed.

DO THE BSRI AND PAQ MEASURE THE SAME OR DIFFERENT CONCEPTS

The present article assesses Frables (1989) contention that the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) measures only desirable instrumental and expressive characteristics, whereas the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) measures gender schema and related gender concepts. Comparison of the two instruments indicates, first, that they are similar in content and that the parallel M and F scales are substantially correlated. Further, the results obtained with the two instruments in three areas (self-esteem, sex-role attitudes, and gender-schematic processing) suggest that both are valid measures of desirable instrumental and expressive traits. Sex-role attitudes, however, tend to have small and typically nonsignificant relationships with both sets of scales, whereas few studies of gender schematic processing have produced replicable results even with the BSRI. However, Bem and her associates have reported positive results using other designs that have yet to be replicated using either the BSRI or the PAQ. Thus, in response to Frables (1989) assertion, it seems at best premature to come to any conclusion about whether one, both, or neither of the questionnaires measure broad gender constructs.

Sex-Role Attitudes:1972-1980

Sex-role attitudes as measured by the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (Spence & Helmreich, 1972) were assessed in samples of students tested in 1972, 1976, and 1980 and in samples of their parents tested in 1972 and 1976. In both student and adult samples there were large and significant shifts toward egalitarianism between 1972 and 1976. Male students showed no overall change in attitudes between 1976 and 1980, while female students showed a small but significant shift in the conservative direction. Examination of individual items revealed highest endorsement by both sexes of vocational and educational equality.