Abstract
Bem has criticized psychological scales which categorize individuals as masculine or feminine and has developed the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI) to measure androgyny as well as femininity and masculinity. Bem's work on androgyny has stimulated not only a growing research tradition on androgyny but also methodological critiques of the BSRI instrument and scoring procedure. The purpose of this research is to replicate in part a study done by Pedhazur and Tetenbaum which raises serious questions about the unidimensionality of the feminine and masculine subscales in the BSRI. The alternative multidimensional techniques of factor analysis (the method used by Pedhazur and Tetenbaum) and smallest space analysis are applied to the BSRI data set. Both techniques indicate that the feminine and masculine subsets are not unidimensional, but they yield quite different results concerning the actual nature of the dimensions in the BSRI. The results of the factor analysis, but not the smallest space analysis, are consistent with the findings of Pedhazur and Tetenbaum, thus yielding mixed evidence about the validity of their conclusions based solely on factor-analyzed data.
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The author wishes to acknowledge the constructive comments by Professors Milton Bloombaum, John Gartrell, Louis Guttman, and Martha Mednick during various stages of this research, and the assistance of Dr. Jerry Brennan with the data analysis. Support for this project was provided by the Social Science Research Institute, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii.
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Ruch, L.O. Dimensionality of the bem sex role inventory: A multidimensional analysis. Sex Roles 10, 99–117 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287750
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00287750