The Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale: Development and Validation of a New Measure for Girls

Abstract

This article describes the development and validation of the Adolescent Femininity Ideology Scale (AFIS) through three studies with racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse early, middle, and late adolescent girls. Distinguished from feminine personality trait and feminine gender role, the concept of femininity ideology represents the individual-level construct that links individual females to social constructions of femininity. The AFIS measures the extent to which adolescent girls have internalized or resisted two negative conventions of femininity in two psychological domains: experience of self in relationship with others and relationship with one's body. Grounded in girls' own words, the 20-item scale is comprised of two subscales reflecting these domains. The AFIS has acceptable internal consistency and temporal stability. We demonstrate construct and concurrent validity, as well as discriminant validity from the Bern Sex Role Inventory (Bern, 1981) and the Attitudes Towards Women Scale for Adolescents (Galambos, Petersen, Richards, & Gitelson, 1985). We discuss the promise and limits of this new measure of gender ideology for adolescent girls.