Exploring Sexual Prejudice in Context

Résumé du livre

Traditional measurement of antigay bias has focused on older notions of the problem, for example homophobia, and has failed to demarcate the precise source of prejudice. Of particular importance for social work educators is the specific source of biases found in the student population, especially one that is exposed to additional education about gays and lesbians. With that aim, this dissertation presents and evaluates a newly developed multidimensional measure of antigay bias. Items for the Sexual Prejudice Scale (SPS) were written to reflect contemporary conceptualization of antigay bias and based on a model of prejudice proposed by Haddock et al. (1993) and the perspective on prejudice espoused by conflict theory. The acquisition of prejudice may be multimodal, but its chief components remain stable--disparaging cognitions and negative affective reactions. Measurement of a latent phenomenon is improved when clear theoretical delineation of the construct is followed by accurate depiction through operationalization. Applying this approach, the SPS was designed to reflect the two primary forms of sexual prejudice--biases against gay men and those against lesbians. Within each of the gendered scales, each component of prejudice was conceived as a separate subscale to facilitate precision in measurement. These components are valuation, stereotyping, affective responses, and support for social equality.