Psychometric properties of an internalized homonegativity test in colombian homosexual and bisexual men

Abstract

  The aim of this paper is to report evidence of the validity and reliability of Internalized Homophobia Scale IHP, originally developed by John Martin and Laura Dean, adapted to self report (Herek & Glunt. 1995). Evidence of nomological validity, and construct content and the total reliability and the sub scales found from the process of factor analysis is presented. The sample is non-probabilistic males comprised 328 self-identified as gay and bisexual residents in the cities of Bogota, Villavicencio and Tunja aged between 14 and 67 years (average = 23, DE 7.61). The scale has 9 items and is answered by Likert-type scale from Strongly Disagree (1) to Strongly Agree (5). A higher score higher levels of internalized homophobia. The internalized homophobia construct normally distributed (Kolmogorov-Smirnov = 1.28. P = 0.07). The IHP has good nomological validity when correlated significantly with other constructs such as gender roles (r = 0.36, p = 0.001), body image (r = 0.35, p = 0.002) and minority stress (r = 0.25, p = 0.033). Analysis of expert judges provided concordance significant on the consistency, adequacy, clarity and acceptability of the items, which were all confirmed in quantitative validation. There was no agreement among the judges on the relevance of the items. Exploratory factor analysis found two factors that explain 54% of the variance. The results indicate that acceptable reliability having IHP (total α = 0.71, α 1 = 0.84; α 2 = 60). It conclude that IHP has adequate psychometric characteristics. The findings confirm the results of previous research.