DEVELOPING A SCALE TO MEASURE THE DIVERSITY OF FEMINIST ATTITUDES

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