In Defense of the Attitudes toward Women Scale: An Affirmation of Validity and Reliability

Abstract

Numerous references were found as positive evidence of construct validity, criterion validity, and reliability for Attitudes Toward Women Scale. New separate factor analytic studies of the 55-item scale and of its 25-item short form were performed to evaluate and extend previous construct validations. Contrary to earlier reports of structural analysis, an administration of the scale to 208 female and 243 male tennis players yielded only one major factor, accounting for 22% of the total variance. An administration of the 25-item scale to 293 male and 258 female university students also yielded one major factor accounting for 30% and 23% of the total variance, respectively. Separate reliability analyses over female and male subjects yielded alphas of .93 for the 55-item scale and .86 and .90, respectively, for the 25-item scale. A Pearson correlation between the short and long forms produced a coefficient of .99. Recently reported doubts about the instrument's validity were groundless.