Developing a Scale to Measure the Diversity of Feminist Attitudes

This article reports two studies aimed at developing a new scale of attitudes toward women, incorporating six theoretically derived perspectives: conservative; liberal, radical, socialist, and cultural feminist; and women of color (womanist). In Study 1, an initial pool of 306 items was given to 117 respondents. Selection of 10 attitudinal and 3 behavioral items from each perspective for the final scale was based chiefly on item-total correlations. In Study 2, the Feminist Perspectives Scale was administered to 344 respondents and showed reasonable reliability and validity. For Femscore, a composite of five feminist attitudinal subscales, Cronbach's alpha was .91; test–retest correlations were .91 at 2 weeks and .86 at 4 weeks. Empirical data provided generally good support for the six perspectives, and factor analysis produced partial support for the six-perspective structure.