The Personal Attributes Questionnaire in Britain: Establishing construct validity

Abstract

The Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ) is a self‐report survey which was designed to measure the degree to which an individual has internalized instrumental and expressive gender‐role attributes. Originally developed and validated in the United States, researchers have begun to utilize this instrument in other cultures without sufficiently examining the effect that cross‐cultural factors may have on its construct validity. This study examines the emergent factor structure of the PAQ in a large, heterogeneous sample of British adults. While other non‐British studies have empirically confirmed the validity of the PAQ's two‐factor (instrumental and expressive) operationalization, the present analyses support a three‐component interpretation of the instrument. The findings indicate that the PAQ's expressivity scale is relatively homogeneous and unidimensional, but suggests that the instrumentality scale is tapping two distinct concepts. Explanations for the emergence of this three‐component solution were explored.