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Abstract:
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the factor structure of the 15 item Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS). College undergraduates (n = 360; 50% female) were given Spence and Helmreich's (1978) short, 15 item version of the AWS. The results of the factor analyses suggest that the AWS is measuring a unitary attitude toward women in American society and remains unidimensional for both male and female participants. Results also show a positive shift in attitudes toward the roles and rights of women by both men and women. Researchers requiring an attitudes toward women measure will find the 15 item AWS practical.
Keywords: attitudes toward women, culture, sex differences, factor analysis, individualism-collectivism
In 1972, Spence and Helmreich developed the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) that enabled researchers to measure how people viewed the roles of women in our society. Those who score low on the scale hold more traditional, antifeminist views than those scoring higher, who hold more positive, profemininst attitudes toward women. The AWS has been used in research investigating attitudes toward female victims (Kristiansen & Guilietti, 1990; Malovich & Stake, 1990; Muehlenhard, Friedman, & Thomas, 1985; Whatley &Riggio, 1992), women in the workplace (Craig & Jacobs, 1985; Giacalone & Knouse, 1988; Haemmerlie & Montgomery, 1991), the influence of rock music on attitudes toward women (Peterson & Pfost, 1989; St. Lawrence & Jovner, 1991), and in various other areas.
The original 55 item version of the Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) (Spence & Helmreich, 1972) was revised to 25 items (Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1973). The original scale was revised to provide researchers with a shorter, more concise measure of attitudes toward women, while retaining the favorable psychometric properties. The items included in the revised version contained the highest biserial correlations from the original version. A more detailed account of the development of the short, 25 item version of the Attitudes toward Women Scale is provided by Spence et al. There have been few factor analytic investigations into the dimensionality of the original AWS or the 25 item AWS (Buhrke, 1988; Smith & Bradley, 1980; see also Daugherty & Dambrot, 1986; Fine-Davis, 1983; Spence & Helmreich, 1972; Spence et al., 1975). A few years later, the AWS scale was shortened...