An Alternative Measure for Attitudes towards Bisexual People

Abstract

Existing measures of attitudes towards bisexual people include items assessing people’s attitudes, stereotypes, and behavioral intentions regarding this sexual minority, despite the theoretical differences between these constructs. The purpose of the current study was to create separate and well-defined measures for assessing these constructs. The responses to the newly created measures were collected online from 377 US MTurk Workers (88% heterosexual, 75% white, 57% men, median age 32 years). Common factor analyses were performed to determine the factor structure of the measures and how they should be scored. According to several exploratory data analyses, these measures showed moderately (but not extremely) strong correlations and somewhat differing pattern of gender differences. Together, both the social psychology literature and current empirical evidence implied that it might be a better practice to treat attitudes, stereotypes, and behavioral intentions regarding bisexual people as different constructs and assess them using distinct and clear-cut measures.