Abstract
Innovative research is constrained by instruments that assume gender to be captured by dichotomous categories. This article presents the results of two studies that document the psychometric properties of the Social Roles Questionnaire (SRQ), a new measure of gender role attitudes. A social constructivist perspective guided the development of the instrument that was designed not only to capture the diversity in people’s thinking about social roles for men and women, but also to identify attitudes that transcend binary categories. The article details the process of assessing reliability and validity based on data from 414 undergraduates. Findings revealed the SRQ is reliable and valid and that women were more likely than men to endorse egalitarian and gender transcendent beliefs. Additional possible uses of the SRQ are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded in part by a Graduate School Summer Faculty Fellowship and by the Vice President of Research’s Discretionary Fund at the University of New Hampshire to the second author. We thank Elisa Hankenson, Rod Kovach, Karolynn Mandalone, Stacey Pieczarka, Danielle Pupa, and Elizabeth Ryan for their help in conducting this investigation. Partial results of these studies were presented at the meetings of the National Council on Family Relations, Rochester, NY, November 2001, and Houston, TX, November 2002. Both authors contributed equally to the study.
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Baber, K.M., Tucker, C.J. The Social Roles Questionnaire: A New Approach to Measuring Attitudes Toward Gender. Sex Roles 54, 459–467 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9018-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-006-9018-y