The Recalled Childhood Gender Identity/Gender Role Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties

Abstract

This article reports on the psychometric properties of The Recalled Childhood Gender Identity/Gender Role Questionnaire, a 23-item questionnaire designed to measure recalled gender-typed behavior and relative closeness to mother and father during childhood. Five considerations guided its development: (1) scale items should show, on average, evidence for “normative” sex differences or be related to within-sex variation across target groups for which one might expect, on theoretical grounds, significant differences; (2) the items should be written in a manner such that they could be answered by both men and women; (3) the items should provide coverage of a range of gender-typed behaviors, including those that capture core aspects of the phenomenology of gender identity disorder in children; (4) the items should be abstract enough such that the description of the underlying construct would not be tied to a specific object or activity that might have been common during one period of time but not another, thus affording greater ecological validity across a large age range and birth cohorts; and (5) the questionnaire should be short enough that it would have practical utility in broader research projects and in clinical settings. A total of 1305 adolescents and adults (735 girls/women; 570 boys/men), with a mean age of 33.2 years (range=13–74), completed the questionnaire. Factor analysis identified a two-factor solution: Factor 1 consisted of 18 items that pertain to childhood gender role and gender identity, which accounted for 37.4% of the variance, and Factor 2 consisted of three items that pertain to parent–child relations (closeness to mother and father), which accounted for 7.8% of the variance. Tests of discriminant validity were generally successful in identifying significant between-group variation.