Pqchok~gyof Women Quurterly, 21 (1997), 17-34. Printed in the United States of America.

THE ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN

SCALE AND ATTITUDE CHANGE
IN COLLEGE STUDENTS

Janet T. Spence and Eugene D. Hahn

University of Texas at Austin

To determine cohort changes in gender-role attitudes, responses to the

15-item form of the Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence &
Helmreich, 1972a, 1978) were compared for students at the same uni-
versity tested in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992. In both males and fe-
males, members of the 1992 cohort were the most egalitarian, and mem-
bers of the 1972 cohort were the least egalitarian. In all groups, women
were significantly less traditional in their attitudes than men. As has been
found in previous studies, detailed analyses of the data from the 1992
cohort revealed that the scale was unifactorial, but that the score distri-
butions were skewed. There was also some indication of ceiling effects
at the egalitarian end of the scale, particularly in women. The implica-
tions of these latter results for the usefulness of the AWS in current
research were explored.

The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence & Helmreich, 1972a)
is now over 2 decades old. The AWS, which is subtitled “An Objective
Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward the Rights and Roles of Women
in Contemporary Society,” appeared at a time when the influence of the
women’s movement in encouraging psychological research relevant to gen-
der was becoming visible. Indeed, these events were the stimulus for the
scale’s development.
Marked social changes have taken place since the construction of the
AWS. Among other things, women, particularly married women with
children, have been entering the labor force in greater numbers; sexist

This article is based on a master’s thesis by the second author submitted to The University of
Texas at Austin.
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Janet T. Spence, Department of Psychol-
ogy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712. Email: Spence@psyvax.psy.utexas.edu.

Published by Cambridge University Press 0361-6843197 $7.50 + .lo 17

18 SPENCE A N D HAHN
hiring practices by employers and educational institutions have dimin-
ished as a consequence of legislation barring gender discrimination and
mandating affirmative action (Jacobs, Shipp, & Brown, 1989; Shank,
1988). In response to these changes in social climate, women have been
seeking advanced training and entering male-dominated professions in
greater numbers (U.S. Department of Labor, Women’s Bureau, 1991).
Presumably, these changes have both produced and been produced by
shifts in societal attitudes toward a more egalitarian position. Some com-
mentators have suggested, however, that in recent years the pace of
change may have slowed or even reversed direction.
The pri;nary purpose of the present study was to trace changes in gen-
der-role beliefs by comparing the responses to a 19item version of the
AWS obtained from four cohorts of college students at the same university
tested in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992. A second, related purpose was to
examine the data from the 1992 sample in more detail to determine
whether the AWS continues to have satisfactory psychometric properties
and can still be considered a useful measure of gender-role ideology.

THE AWS AND ITS DEVELOPMENT

The AWS is intended to assess people’s beliefs about the responsibilities,

privileges, and behaviors in a variety of spheres that have traditionally
been divided along gender lines but could, in principle, be shared equally
by men and women. In devising the scale, we1 therefore did not include
items that described, for example, beliefs about men’s and women’s cogni-
tive abilities and personality characteristics, or attitudes toward gender-
relevant political issues, such as the feminist movement, abortion, or anti-
discriminatory legislation. The title we gave to the instrument, the
Attitudes Toward Women Scale, accurately reflected our interest in
women and the achievement of a more egalitarian society, but as we have
implied above, it is something of a misnomer. Implicit in the rationale of
the scale and of the items themselves is that the scale taps beliefs about
appropriate responsibilities and rights for women versus those for men. As
Eagly and Mladinic (1989) have noted, the AWS is more accurately de-
scribed as a measure of attitudes toward women’s Tights than attitudes
toward women.
The original AWS contained 55 items, a number of them drawn or
modified from a measure devised by Kirkpatrick (1936) some three de-
cades earlier. Our interest in determining the relationships between the
AWS and a number of other variables led us, for pragmatic reasons, to
develop briefer versions of the scale that could be completed in a short
amount of time (Spence & Helmreich, 1978; Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp,
1973). The version that we have exclusively used since the mid-1970s
contains 15 items selected from the original set of 55 on the basis of their
Attitude Change 19
superior psychometric properties (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). The 15-
item form, which is highly correlated with the original version in both
males and females, has also been used in recent years by most other investi-
gators.
Not surprisingly, self-report instruments with aims similar to the AWS
began to appear in the social science literature at about the same time or
had appeared somewhat earlier (e.g., Brown & Hellinger, 1975; Dempe-
wolff, 1974; Jacobson, Anderson, Berletich, & Berdahl, 1976; MacDon-
ald, 1974; Steinmann, 1963). Perhaps because the AWS and data we ob-
tained with it appeared in mainstream psychology journals (e.g., Spence
& Helmreich, 1972b; Spence et al., 1975), the AWS quickly became the
most popular instrument of its kind, at least within the psychological
community. As listed in Beere’s (1979) handbook of tests and measures
related to women’s issues, the AWS was used in over 90 studies between
1972 and 1978 in addition to those published by the Texas group. Other
measures with purposes similar to the AWS have subsequently been devel-
oped (e.g., Beere, King, Beere, & King, 1984), but if for no other reason
than its early visibility, the AWS continues to be the most commonly used
measure of gender-role attitudes by a wide margin. In her 1990 handbook
of gender-role measures, for example, Beere lists over 300 studies using the
AWS that have appeared since 1978 (Beere, 1990).
Taken en masse, the large body of work involving the AWS that has
accumulated over the past quarter of a century has amply demonstrated
its utility. The very changes in attitudes that we expect to demonstrate,
however, may have led the scale to have different or less satisfactory
psychometric properties and to be less useful than it once was. Some critics
(e.g., Jean & Reynolds, 1984; Larsen & Long, 1988) have suggested, for
example, that the content of gender-role attitudes may have changed over
the years so that the items on the AWS are less relevant to the contempo-
rary scene than they were in earlier years. In view of the continued popu-
larity of the AWS, data relevant to these issues seemed important to ob-
tain.

CHANGES IN GENDER-ROLE AlTlTUDES

Research in the United States has demonstrated that since the mid-l960s,
there has been a notable softening in the traditional belief that women
and men ought to play distinctly different roles within and outside the
home and have different rights and privileges (e.g., Cherlin & Walters,
1981; Helmreich, Spence, & Gibson, 1982; Mason, Czajka, & Arber,
1976; McBroom, 1987; Thornton, Alwin, & Camburn, 1983). These and
other studies (e.g., Dambrot, Papp, & Whitmore, 1984; Spence & Helm-
reich, 1978), which have tested samples with different characteristics at a
variety of times and locations, have demonstrated that such demographic
20 SPENCE AND HAHN
variables as gender, socioeconomic background, and age are all related to
gender-role traditionality. At the same time, they have demonstrated that
changes in attitudes have occurred over time within each of these demo-
graphic groups.
One of these studies (Helmreich et al., 1982) involved a comparison of
scores on the 15-item AWS obtained from three cohorts of introductory
psychology students at the University of Texas tested in 1972, 1976, and
1980. In all three samples, women were more egalitarian than men, thus
confirming findings in other studies using the AWS and similar instru-
ments. Also in line with other studies, both men and women tested in 1976
and 1980 endorsed less traditional attitudes than those tested in 1972.
Almost all the studies aimed at tracing attitude changes were conducted
in the mid-1980s or before. In the present study we attempted to bring the
record more up to date by comparing the data obtained from the earlier
cohorts reported by Helmreich et al. (1982) with data obtained from Texas
students tested in 1992. We also examined the psychometric properties of
the 1992 data set in detail. For ease of explication, these two aspects are
presented as Study 1(temporal trends across cohorts) and Study 2 (analysis
of the 1992 data).

STUDY 1

Method
Participants and Procedure
The participants were students in introductory psychology classes at The
University of Texas at Austin tested in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992. Mem-
bers of each group were administered the 18item version of the AWS at
the beginning of the semester as part of a larger survey administered to
each class. Students had signed a consent form and were later given a
general debriefing about the nature of the test battery that included the
AWS.
The 1972, 1976, and 1980 samples consisted of 281 men and 241
women, 301 men and 298 women, and 284 men and 369 women, respec-
tively. Data from these groups were previously reported by Helmreich et
al. (1982). Data from the 1992 cohort, made up of 216 men and 283
women, were obtained by the present authors. No data relating to age,
class status, or ethnicity were available for the earlier cohorts. Other stud-
ies conducted with introductory students at the University of Texas during
these time periods, however, have found that they were predominantly in
their first-year, Caucasian, and from middle to upper middle-class back-
grounds, and with few exceptions, ranged in age from 18 to 22 years.
Students in the 1992 cohort were similar to their earlier peers in age and
class standing (approximately 84 % were first-year) but differed in the
Attitude Change 21
Table 1
Means, Standard Deviations, and Skewnessfor Men and
Women in Each Cohort
Cohort Gender Mean SD Skewness

1972 Men 21.29 3.60 -0.34

Women 24.31 3.69 -0.04
1976 Men 25.82 9.16 0.07
Women 30.70 8.28 -0.36
1980 Men 26.04 6.70 -0.17
Women 29.46 7.81 -0.12
1992 Men 32.13 7.30 -0.51
Women 36.34 6.10 -1.18
Note: Higher scores indicate more egalitarian attitudes.

greater number of members of ethnic minorities. In ethnicity, approxi-

mately 71 % were White, 15% were Hispanic, 9 % were Asian, and 1%
were “other.”
Attitudes Toward Women Scale
The items on the 15-item version of the AWS (Spence & Helmreich, 1978)
are shown in Table 2. Each item is accompanied by a 4-point response
scale whose extremes are labeled agree strongly and disagree strongly.’
Approximately half of the items present an egalitarian point of view and
the remainder present a traditional point of view. The egalitarian items
are reverse-scored. The item scores, which range from 0 to 3, are summed
to obtain a total scale score for each respondent. Possible scores thus range
from 0 to 45, with high scores indicating more egalitarian attitudes.
Early investigations with 15-item and 25-item versions (Spence et al.,
1973) reveal that, for both males and females, these shorter forms have (a)
a unifactorial structure, (b) Cronbach alphas in the mid-.80s or higher,
and (c) satisfactory test-retest reliability (e.g. , Daugherty & Dambrot,
1986; Loo & Logan, 1977; Smith & Bradley, 1980; Spence et al., 1973;
Yoder, Rice, Adams, Priest, & Prince, 1982). They are also highly corre-
lated with the original, 55-item scale.

Results and Discussion

Total Scale Scores
The means for men and women in each cohort are shown in Table 1 and
are depicted graphically in Figure 1. (Recall that higher scores indicate
more egalitarian attitudes.) With the exception of the women in the 1980
sample, whose mean was somewhat below that of the women in the 1976
sample, the upward trend in scores found in the three earlier cohorts
continued in 1992. As has also been found by other investigators, the
22 SPENCE AND HAHN
.t women
-0- Men

I I I I I

1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992

Year

FIGURE1. Mean AWS scores of the men and

the women in the 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992
cohorts. The maximum possible score is 45.

means for women were consistently higher than those for men. The results
of a 2 (gender) x 4 (cohort) analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that
the mean differences associated with cohort (F [3, 22651 = 173.62) and
gender (F [l, 22651 = 228.40) were both highly significant (p’s <
.OOOl). The interaction between cohort and gender, however, was nonsig-
nificant (F [3, 22651 = 2.01, p < .lo).
The frequency distributions for each gender and cohort are displayed in
Figure 2 and the degree of skewness in each of the distributions is reported
in Table 1. One will note that in the three earlier cohorts, the distributions
were close to being symmetrical. In 1992 the distributions for women and
to a lesser extent, for men, exhibited a more marked negative skew. The
implications of these findings are amplified at a later point.
To further investigate the differences in means, the gender and cohort
variables were redefined to permit examination of the results with New-
man-Keuls tests. The two independent variables were collapsed into one
independent variable having eight groups (4 cohort groups within each
gender). Thus, all eight groups were treated as different levels of a single
variable. The results are summarized in Table 2. They indicate that, for
both males and females, means were significantly higher in 1976 and 1980
than they were in 1972, and that the 1992 means were significantly higher
than those of the three earlier cohorts. The one exception to this pattern
appears in the two middle cohorts. For reasons that are not apparent,
men’s scores increased, but nonsignificantly so, from 1976 to 1980,
whereas the women’s scores decreased significantly (p < .05) from 1976
to 1980.
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23
N
e Table 2
Means for Men and Women in Each Cohort on Total Scores and on Individual Items
Gender 1972 Mean 1976 Mean 1980 Mean 1992 Mean
Total Scores Men 21.28" 25.82' 26.04' 32.13'
Women 24.31b 30.70' 29.46d 36.348
Item Scores
1. Swearing and obscenity are more Men 1.13b 1.04b 0.87" 1.42"
repulsive in the speech of a woman Women 1.17b 1.17b l.lgb 1.68d
than a man.
2. Under modern economic condi- Men 1.2Sb 2.09' 2.17" 2.44d
tions, with women active outside Women 1.12" 2.44d 2.36d 2.82"
the home, men should share in
household tasks such as washing
dishes and doing laundry.
3. It is insulting to women to have Men 1.71b 1.31" 1.31' 1.65b
the "obey" clause still in the mar- Women 1.5Sb 1.49"*b 1.52"9b 2.12'
riage service.
4. A woman should be as free as a Men 1.27'3b 1.7Pd 1.61" 2.31'
man to propose marriage. Women 1.88d 1.38b 1.14' 2.09"
5. Women should worry less Men 1.51" 1.7Sb 1.87b*' 2.15d
about their rights and more about Women 1.84b3c 2. 14d 1.99'*d 2.52'
becoming good wives and
mothers.
6. Women earning as much as Men 1.54'eb 1.73' 1.39" 2.Wd
their dates should bear equally the Women 1.79' 1,62b*' 1.4gnyb 1.76"
expense when they go out to-
gether.
7. Women should assume their right- Men 0.86b 2.01' 2.06' 2.37d
ful place in business and all the Women 0.64" 2.40d 2.32d 2.58'
professions along with men.
 8. A woman should not expect to go Men 1.58" 1.63" 1.84b 2.22'
to exactly the same places or to Women 1.71aTb 2.11' 2.06' 2.5Qd
have quite the same freedom of ac-
tion as a man.
9. Sons in a family should be given Men 1.95" 2. 17b 2.45' 2.74d
more encouragement to go to col- Women 2.54' 2. 6gd 2.72d 2.95'
lege than daughters.
10. It is ridiculous for a woman to run Men 1.40" 1.82b 1.73b 2.26'
a locomotive and for a man to Women 1.80b 2.29" 2-11" 2.6Qd
darn socks.
11. In general, the father should have Men 1.95" 1.83" 1.81" 2.32b
greater authority than the mother Women 2.46b 2.37b 2.31b 2.76'
in the bringing up of children.
12. The intellectual leadership of a Men 1.70" 1.74a3b 1.87b 2.27d
community should be largely in Women 2.12" 2.3Qd 2.31d 2.73"
the hands of men.
13. Economic and social freedom is Men 1.50"*b 1.44" 1.57"3b 1.77'
worth far more to women than ac- Women 1.47'sb 1. ~ a , b , c 1.67b" 1.94d
ceptance of the ideal of femininity,
which has been set up by men.
14. There are many jobs in which men Men 1.15' 1.16" 1.29" 1.87b
should be given preference over Women 1.72b 1.85b 1.70b 2.45'
women in being hired or pro-
moted.
15. Women should be given equal op- Men 0.82b 2.23d 2.12' 2. 35d
portunity with men for apprentice- Women 0.51" 2.73' 2.47" 2.67'
ship in the various trades.
Note: The superscripts refer to the results of the Newman-Keuls tests in which the eight gender and cohort groups in each comparison were treated as different levels of
a single variable. Different superscripts indicate means significantly different at the .05 level. Increasing superscrip6 denote increasing means. The possible range of
item scores is 0-3.
26 SPENCE AND HAHN
SCOT~S on Individual Items
Parallel analyses were performed on the data from the 15 individual items.
The means were first analyzed by a 2 (gender) x 4 (cohort) multivariate
analysis of variance (MANOVA) with the 15 items as dependent variables.
The multivariate main effect of gender yielded a significant Wilk‘s h of
.846 (F [l5, 22511 = 27.38, p < .0001). The Wilk’s h for the multivari-
ate main effect of cohort was also significant (h = .319; F [45, 6687.931
= 69.73, p < .0001), as was the Wilk‘s h for the interaction (A = .823;
F [45, 6687.931 = 10.08, p < .0001). Differencesamong the items across
gender and cohort were then examined by Newman-Keuls tests in which
the eight groups were treated as different levels of a single factor for each
item.
As may be observed, with one exception for each gender, members of
the 1992 cohort scored significantly higher (were more egalitarian) on all
items than their same-sex peers in each of the three earlier cohorts. For
men, the exception was the statement “It is insulting to a woman to have
the ‘obey’clause still in the marriage service” (Item 3). Although the mean
of men tested in 1992 was significantly higher than the means of men
tested in 1976 and 1980, it did not differ significantly from the mean of
the group tested in 1972. For women, the 1992 mean for the statement
“Women earning as much as their dates should bear equally the expense of
going out together” (Item 6) did not differ significantly from the means of
the women tested in 1972 and 1976. As reported by Helmreich et al.
(1982), however, women tested in 1980 scored significantly lower than
their same-sex peers, not only in 1992 but also in 1972 and 1976.
In 1992, women scored significantly higher than men on 13 of the 15
items but significantly lower on the remaining two items (Items 4 and 6,
referring to proposing marriage and sharing expenses on a date, respec-
tively). As noted above, whereas men were becoming progressively more
“liberated in their beliefs about women paying their own way on dates
(Item 6), women in 1992 showed no greater enthusiasm for doing so than
had their sisters in earlier times; the result of these different temporal
trends within each gender was an inversion of the 1992 means for men and
women. The second reversal occurred with the statement “A woman
should be as free as a man to propose marriage” (Item 4). Although both
women and men tested in 1992 were more willing to endorse this item
than their peers questioned in earlier years, women tested in 1992 were
significantly less willing than men. This inversion between the scores of
men and women was also found in 1976 and 1980 (Helmreich et al.,
1982). Women remain relatively inexperienced in taking the initiative
with men to whom they are attracted or romantically involved; as these
results suggest, they may therefore be reluctant to approve behaviors that
carry a risk of rejection.
In summary, as reflected in their overall scores, both male and female
students taking the AWS in 1972 were significantly less egalitarian than
Attitude Change 27
all later cohorts, and the 1992 cohort was significantly more egalitarian
than all of the earlier cohorts. The pace of change was the same in both
men and women. That is, although women scored higher than men in
each cohort, the interaction between gender and cohort was not signifi-
cant.
Except for one item in each gender, the significantly more liberal views
of the 1992 cohort found in the overall scores for each respondent were
reflected in the means of the individual items of the scale. Thus, at least
among the largely middle-class college students we tested, the progress
made in the 1970s and early 1980s toward abolition of beliefs in traditional
gender-role distinctions continued into the early 1990s.

STUDY 2

In Study 2, data from the 1992 cohort were examined in more detail to
determine whether certain psychometric properties were similar to those
obtained in earlier cohorts and to explore the implications of the shift in
means toward the upper end of the scale.

Results
Factor Structure
As noted earlier, studies conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s using
short versions of the AWS indicated that, for both men and women, both
the 25-item and the 15-item versions of the AWS were unifactorial. To
determine whether this was still the case, unrotated principal-factor anal-
yses were performed with the 1992 data (SAS Institute Inc. , 1988). For the
overall set of data, a scree plot revealed that only the first factor had an
eigenvalue appreciably greater than 1 .O, suggesting that a single-factor
solution was appropriate. The responses of the men and women were then
analyzed separately. In each group, only one factor had an eigenvalue
greater than 1.00, again suggesting that single-factor solutions were ap-
propriate for both genders. For men, this factor had an eigenvalue of 4.59,
and accounted for 89 % of the common variance, as measured by the sum
of the positive eigenvalues, and 31 % of the total variance. In women, the
factor had an eigenvalue of 3.81, and accounted for 86% of the common
variance, as measured by the sum of the positive eigenvalues, and 25 % of
the total variance. The factor loadings on each of the items are shown in
Table 3. The conservative method advocated by Stevens (1992) was used
to test their significance. In men, as Table 3 indicates, the loadings for two
of the items (Items 6 and 13, having to do with dating expenses and
economic and social freedom, respectively) were positive but nonsignifi-
cant (p > .05). For women, however, all items loaded significantly.
Results of the same analyses conducted with the data of the 1972 sam-
 Table 3
Factor Loadings, Means, Standard Deviations, and Skewness of Items for Men and Women in 1992 Cohort
Factor Loading Mean Standard Deviation Skewness
Item M W M W M W M W

1. Swearing 0.35 0.43 1.42 1.68 0.92 0.99 0.40 0.05

2. Household tasks 0.64 0.55 2.44 2.82 0.73 0.53 -1.28 -3.58
3. “Obey”clause 0.45 0.49 1.65 2.12 1.04 0.95 -0.14 -0.74
4. Propose marriage 0.49 0.53 2.31 2.09 0.96 0.96 -1.21 -0.70
5. Worry about rights 0.69 0.58 2.15 2.52 0.93 0.80 -0.79 - 1.63
6. Expenses on dates 0.18’ 0.38 2.00 1.76 0.93 0.94 -0.55 -0.35
7. Place in business 0.43 0.36 2.37 2.58 0.78 0.76 -1.17 - 1.97
8. Same freedoms 0.59 0.57 2.22 2.59 0.92 0.76 -0.91 - 1.83
9. Encouragement college 0.65 0.35 2.74 2.95 0.56 0.23 -2.36 -5.00
10. Locomotive/socks 0.75 0.57 2.26 2.69 0.91 0.63 -0.94 -2.18
11. Authority children 0.65 0.59 2.32 2.76 0.87 0.58 -1.10 -2.70
12. Community leadership 0.76 0.56 2.27 2.73 0.80 0.59 -0.86 -2.49
13. Economic freedom 0.19‘ 0.34 1.77 1.94 0.85 0.89 -0.28 -0.52
14.Job preference 0.58 0.62 1.87 2.45 0.95 0.84 -0.15 - 1.25
15. Apprentice trades 0.49 0.51 2.35 2.67 0.80 0.71 -1.09 -2.47
Note: Possible range of item scores is 0-3.
* p < .05. Critical values are .35 and .30for men and women, reqectively.
Attitude Change 29
ples allowed comparisons with the data obtained in 1992. For men tested
in 1972,95 % of the common variance and 31 % of the total variance was
accounted for (versus 89% and 31 % , respectively, for the 1992 cohort).
For women tested in 1972, 89% of the common variance and 31 % of the
total variance was accounted for (versus 86% and 31 % , respectively, for
the 1992 cohort). The data thus suggest that the factor structure of the
AWS has essentially remained unchanged over the past 20 years. As could
be expected from these outcomes, the Cronbach alphas for the 1992 group
were also comparable to the values reported in earlier studies (e.g.,
Daugherty & Dambrot, 1986; Spence & Helmreich, 1978) and were sub-
stantial in magnitude (.84 for men and .81 for women), thus further
suggesting that the AWS currently has some of the same psychometric
properties as it did 1 and 2 decades ago.

Skewness and Ceiling Effects in the 1992 Cohort

As reported in Table 1, the measures of skewness based on total scores
were all close to 0 in the three early cohorts. Inspection of the raw data
confirmed that in both men and women, the distributions were approxi-
mately symmetrical. By 1992, however, the distributions of total scores
had become markedly negatively skewed, particularly in women. This
was the joint product of the shift in means toward the egalitarian extreme
and, as reflected in the standard deviations, the considerable variability
among the scores. Although in 1992 more and more members of both
genders approached the upper limits of the scale, some men and women
were still quite traditional in their views, thus producing distributions
with long tails pointing toward the lower end of the score distributions.
Further data from the 1992 samples are shown in Table 3, which in-
cludes the means (also shown in Table 2), standard deviations, and skew-
ness for each item. Possible item scores, it will be recalled, range from 0 to
3, with 0 representing the extreme traditional option and 3 the extreme
egalitarian option. Attention should be directed to several aspects of the
data. First, in both men and women, the degree of skewness tends to
increase as item means approach the upper limit (i.e., some respondents
reported quite traditional beliefs even on items with means approaching
3). Second, all but one of the item means for men and all the item means
for women are above the midpoint of the possible score range (1.5). None-
theless, there is a fair amount of variability among the means; those for
men range from 1.42 to 2.74 and those for women range from 1.65 to
2.95.
Of special concern are the items with means at the upper end of the
scale. In women, six items have means above 2.60, suggestingthe possibil-
ity of ceiling effects. This constraint was especially marked in Item 9,
which states that “Sons in a family should be given more encouragement
to go to college than daughters.” The mean of 2.95 indicates that almost
30 SPENCE AND HAHN

all the women in this sample of students enrolled in a selective public

university chose the strongly disagree option in responding to this item.
Ceiling effects were less marked in men. In contrast to women, only one
item had a mean higher than 2.60. This item was again Item 9, which
referred to the greater encouragement of sons than daughters to go to
college. The mean for this item was 2.74, the next highest mean (Item 2)
having a value of 2.44.

GENERAL DISCUSSIONAND CONCLUSION

The major purpose of the present study was to compare scores on the
15-item AWS in cohorts of students tested in 1972, 1976, 1980, and 1992
in order to investigate temporal changes in gender-role attitudes over the
past 2 decades. We were gratified to find that the trend toward egalitari-
anism found in our earlier study (Helmreich et al., 1982) continued in the
groups tested in 1992. In both men and women, highly significant differ-
ences were found in total scores between the 1992 cohort and each of the
three earlier ones. In all four cohorts, men scored significantlylower (were
more traditional) than women, but, as indicated by the nonsignificant
interaction between gender and cohort, the magnitude of change was
similar in both genders.
Although those who subscribe to gender equality should find these re-
sults cheering, the data simultaneously raise questions from a psychomet-
ric perspective about the continued utility of the AWS, particularly in
college-agemen and women who tend to be less traditional in their gender
ideology than their parents and grandparents (Dambrot et al. , 1984; Helm-
reich et al., 1982). In psychological research on gender-role attitudes using
inventories with multiple items, investigators prototypically use respon-
dents’ total scores to determine the relationships of gender-role attitudes
with other variables or to compare different demographic groups. The
implicit assumption is that the individual items contribute to a general
belief system so that each respondent can be usefully placed on a contin-
uum of attitudes ranging from traditional to egalitarian. Particularly in
scales with a small number of items drawn from a large universe of poten-
tial items, it is important to demonstrate that the items contribute to a
single factor. It was therefore encouraging to find that in 1992 the 15-item
AWS had a unifactorial structure in both genders, as it did in earlier
samples. The finding also provided justification for comparing the scores
of the four cohorts of students as a means of assessing temporal trends in
ideological belief^.^
The purpose of most investigations, however, is to compare groups or to
explore the correlates of role beliefs. In these instances, severe restriction
in scores at the upper end of the scale can limit the capacity of the AWS to
detect such relationships. By 1992 the score distributions, particularly the
Attitude Change 31
distribution for women, were beginning to exhibit ceiling effects. For
example, out of a maximum score of 45, approximately 20 % of the women
and 8% of the men had scores of 41 or above. In recent studies (e.g.,
Spence, 1993; Spence & Buckner, 1995), we have nonetheless obtained
positive results with the AWS, even with samples of college women, sug-
gesting that there is sufficient within-group variability for the scale to
retain its utility. Careful and continued attention to ceiling effects are
warranted, however.
Inspection of the item data, shown in Table 3, suggests that the items
made differential contributions to the ceiling effects. In women, for exam-
ple, the means for two of the items (Items 2 and 9) were above 2.80,
indicating that very few women failed to choose the extreme egalitarian
response option. One possible revision of the AWS would be to obtain data
from a larger pool of statements (for example, items from the original scale
not included on the short form) and to substitute items with lower means
and more symmetrical distributions for the less discriminating items on
the short version. Such substitution would have to be done judiciously,
taking care that in the process, the unifactorial structure of the scale and
other statistical properties were not disturbed.

Conclusions

Psychometric considerations aside, the AWS and other similar instruments

mirror genuine changes in publicly expressed attitudes that have taken
place over the course of the last 3 decades in most segments of society. In
actual behaviors, genuine progress has also been made toward breaking
down gender barriers, although the changes in behavior lag behind the
level of endorsement of egalitarian beliefs. Many factors may contribute
to this gap. Recent research suggests, for example, that subtle forces may
be at work that are not assessed by instruments designed to assess attitudes
about gender roles (e.g., Glick & Fiske, 1996; Swim, Aikin, Hall, &
Hunter, 1995).
In a study of college students that is particularly relevant to the current
political scene, Swim and her colleagues (1995) developed scales to distin-
guish between what they identified as old-fashioned and modern sexism.4
Old-fashioned sexism consists of beliefs in the maintenance of traditional
gender-role distinctions (such as those tapped by the AWS) and adherence
to stereotypes about the characteristics of men and women to rationalize
those distinctions. Modern sexism, on the other hand, consists of denial of
continued discrimination against women, antagonism toward women’s
demands, and lack of support for affirmative action and other policies
designed to be of assistance to women. The investigators demonstrated
that their measures of the two forms of sexism were each unifactorial and
that the two factors were relatively independent.
32 SPENCE A N D HAHN
Doubtless, those who continue to espouse a traditional gender ideology
tend to reject efforts to promote women’s equality and to deny that women
are being treated unfairly. But among those who genuinely believe that
gender distinctions should be modified or abolished (as opposed to those
who give lip service to this view in order to appear politically correct),
there are some who also believe that public opinion has changed so much
and women have made so much progress that they no longer need to be
treated as a protected class; those people believe efforts to advance wom-
en’s causes, governmental and private, may not only be unnecessary but
may also be counterproductive. Even in our own data, obtained with
young college students who are less traditional in their views than most,
there were substantial numbers of both men and women for whom old-
fashioned sexism remained fashionable, however. Gender-role attitudes
both drive and are driven by other gender-related attitudes and behaviors.
If the political forces currently promoting modern sexism continue to gain
strength, old-fashioned sexism may also be on the rise.

First draft received: June 15,1996

Final draft accepted: September 26,1996

NOTES

1. For convenience of exposition, our use of “we” and other first-person pronouns in this
article refers not just to the present authors but to Spence and her students and colleagues
(most notably Robert Helmreich) at The University of Texas at Austin and their research
with the AWS.
2. In our initial AWS studies, we used a 4-point response scale and, in order to obtain
comparable data across cohorts, this scale was used with all of the samples reported here.
We should mention, however, that in recent years we have routinely shifted to employing
a 5-point response scale for the AWS items in order to be congruent with other measures
included in the test battery. The 5-point version leads to a wider range of scores and less
skewness than the 4-point scale (Hahn, 1993),outcomes that reinforce our preference for
using a 5-point scale when contemporary correlates of role attitudes are being explored.
3. This fact does not imply, however, that within a given cohort all items have basically the
same means or are equally effective in discriminating between groups. Our examination of
the individual items from the 1992 sample and of data from the three earlier cohorts
(Helmreich et al., 1982)demonstrate that this is indeed the case. When information about
particular beliefs or behaviors is of interest rather than an overall rating based on total
scores, there is value in examining specific items, preferably from a much larger pool of
items such as those from the original %-item AWS, or from instruments designed to assess
in detail specific aspects of gender-role ideology.
4. This distinction was borrowed from Sears (1988)who distinguished between old-fashioned
and modem racism. A major purpose of the Swim et al. (1995)study was to determine the
parallels between sexist and racist prejudices.

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