Abstract
The Meanings of Adolescent Masculinity Scale (MAMS) and the Adolescent Masculinity Ideology in Relationships Scale (AMIRS) were designed by American researchers to assess masculinity in adolescent boys. Given that masculinities differ cross-culturally, though, these scales may not be viable for use with non-American populations. In the current study, 221 Irish adolescents completed the MAMS and the AMIRS. Using confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs), the MAMS’s and the AMIRS’s factor structures were tested. Results indicated poor goodness-of-fit in both cases. Attempts to improve the models were unsuccessful. Accordingly, neither the MAMS nor the AMIRS appear to be structurally valid within an Irish context. We recommend that researchers consider cultural variations when designing, validating, and utilizing indicators of masculinity.
Highlights
We will begin by describing adolescent masculinity and the ways it is measured, with emphasis placed on the Meanings of Adolescent Masculinity Scale (MAMS) and the Adolescent Masculinity Ideology in Relationships Scale (AMIRS)
Two such scales are the MAMS and the AMIRS. These measures constitute two of the few instruments designed to measure masculinity in youth (Thompson & Bennett, 2015) and, as such, are relevant to the current study. These scales were created within an American context and, to date, there are no published studies detailing the scales’ reliability and structural validity in other English-speaking countries. (While one study did assess the MAMS’s structural validity within a Brazilian context and found it to be inadequate in its original form, that study is unavailable in English; see Guerra et al, 2014.) while ostensibly culture-fair or culture-free measures for intelligence and other similar constructs exist (Zurcher, 1998), it has been demonstrated that attitudinal measures do not possess etic validity and, as such, cannot be culturally unbiased (Roster et al, 2006)
The purpose of this study is to determine whether two scales of adolescent masculinity, developed and tested within an American context, possess factorial integrity when distributed to a group of adolescent boys residing in the Republic of Ireland
Summary
Consisting of 27 items measured from one (strongly disagree) to four (strongly agree), the MAMS (Oransky & Fisher, 2009) is divided into four factors, or categories of questions: constant effort (seven items; e.g., “Acting manly should be the most important goal for guys”); emotional restriction (seven items; e.g., “Guys should not talk about their worries with each other”); heterosexism (eight items; e.g., “A good way to seem manly is to avoid acting gay”); and social teasing (five items; e.g., “In order to fit in, guys must be able to tease other guys”) In concert, these items measure conformity to masculine norms in boys with higher scores denoting stronger conformity
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