Gender Roles and Relationship Norms

Abstract

The Gender Role and Relationship Norms scale is a specialized psychometric instrument designed to quantify young adults’ attitudes toward intimate relationships. Developed initially within the South African context, its primary focus is on understanding the interplay between traditional gender role expectations, relational power dynamics, and the acceptance of violence. Crucially, the scale serves as a tool for researchers investigating the normative environment that influences sexual health behaviors and vulnerability, particularly concerning masculinity and HIV risk in high-prevalence settings. It is structured around seven distinct subscales covering a spectrum from coercive norms and male dominance to relational mutuality and hyper-romantic attachment styles.

Keywords

Gender roles, relationship norms, intimate partner violence, sexual scripts, masculinity, HIV risk, South Africa, psychometric scale, relational mutuality, male dominance, coercive control, relationship power.

Authors

Harrison, A., O’Sullivan, L., Hoffman, S., Dolezal, C., Morrell, R.

Purpose

The scale’s fundamental purpose is the empirical assessment of prevailing relational attitudes and normative expectations among young adults. These expectations function as crucial underlying factors influencing sexual behavior, adherence to traditional norms, and vulnerability to intimate partner violence (IPV).

By quantifying adherence to traditional, dominant, or egalitarian relationship scripts, the instrument provides actionable data for public health researchers. This allows for the development and targeting of interventions aimed at promoting safer sexual practices and mitigating harmful relational behaviors, especially those linked to male dominance and relationship control within high-risk populations. The resulting scores are used to profile individuals or groups holding attitudes that perpetuate harmful behaviors or increase vulnerability.

Construct

The scale measures a complex psychological construct centered on relationship norms and gender role adherence. This construct is multidimensional and operationalized across seven main subscales, designed to capture the nuance of relationship ideology ranging from highly coercive to highly interdependent.

The seven dimensions provide a comprehensive profile of an individual’s normative beliefs, allowing researchers to distinguish specific areas of concern, such as acceptance of violence versus expectations of shared power. These subscales collectively define the spectrum of acceptable and expected behavior within intimate relationships in the studied population.

• Violence in Sexual Relationships (Women/Men): Measures the acceptance or experience of coercion and physical or emotional violence within an intimate relationship, differentiated by the respondent’s gender perspective.
• Power: Assesses attitudes toward shared decision-making and equality of rights within the relationship structure.
• Egalitarian Sex Roles (Sexual Scripts): Measures adherence to norms that favor mutual initiation, communication, and equal satisfaction in sexual interactions.
• Male Dominant Sex Roles: Captures traditional, restrictive, and often negative attitudes toward female sexuality, including items related to condom use responsibility, sexual refusal, and promiscuity stigma.
• Meaning in Relationships—Mutuality: Evaluates the degree of respect, enjoyment, communication, and shared future planning perceived within the relationship.
• Hyper-Romanticism: Measures attitudes reflecting intense dependency, idealized love, and the belief that a relationship is essential for personal survival or identity.

Validity

The validity of the scale, including construct, criterion, and face validity, is rigorously detailed in the original 2006 publication by Harrison and colleagues. A significant strength of this instrument is its high **content validity**, which was established through extensive qualitative data collection from the target population in South Africa. This ensured that the scale items accurately reflected the specific cultural and social norms regarding relationships and sexuality prevalent among young adults.

The empirical support for the seven distinct dimensions confirms strong **construct validity**, indicating that the instrument successfully differentiates between varying relationship ideologies, ranging from those endorsing coercive control and violence to those prioritizing mutuality and equality. Researchers are strongly encouraged to consult the original journal article for specific validation statistics, including correlations with external measures such as sexual risk behavior and relationship satisfaction.

Reliability

Establishing high internal consistency, or reliability, was a key psychometric goal to ensure that the items within each subscale accurately measure a unified underlying construct. While specific Cronbach’s alpha coefficients are not abstracted here, the original psychometric analysis must have established acceptable levels of internal consistency for all seven proposed subscales.

High reliability is crucial for confirming that items measuring complex concepts, such as “Male Dominant Sex Roles,” are consistently interpreted and responded to by the target population, thereby ensuring the stability of the measurement. Users of the scale must review the methodology section of the 2006 study for precise reliability estimates and any available test-retest data.

Factor Analysis

The clear structure of the scale, defined by its seven distinct subscales, confirms that rigorous Factor Analysis (either exploratory or confirmatory) was employed during its development. This statistical process was essential for grouping the numerous individual items into coherent, theoretically meaningful dimensions, providing robust support for the scale’s construct validity.

The resulting factor structure successfully separates conceptually distinct elements of relationship norms, such as distinguishing coercive control norms (Violence subscales) from intense emotional dependency (Hyper-Romanticism). This robust factor solution, detailed in the Harrison et al. (2006) paper, confirms that these seven dimensions function as independent and precise measures of diverse relationship ideologies.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-Report Questionnaire / Attitudinal Scale

Format: Likert-style response format (inferred) applied to a series of statements.

Language Available: English (as presented in the source, likely translated/adapted for local South African languages for field use).

Population Group: Young adults

Age Group: Late adolescence to early adulthood (inferred from “Young Adults”)

Population Details: Specifically validated among young adults in South Africa, focusing on the context of masculinity and sexual health. The instrument is also available as part of a compendium for the assessment of dimensions of violence against women.

Test Methodology: Used in large-scale quantitative research to assess correlations between normative beliefs, gender role adherence, and high-risk sexual behaviors. The scale provides distinct scores for each subscale, allowing for the comprehensive profiling of relationship attitudes. The original instrument is available online via NCBI: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2430491/#App1title

Keywords

Attitude measurement, relationship dynamics, sexual coercion, relationship power, psychometrics, Hyper-Romanticism, mutuality, sexual scripts, interpersonal relationships, gender role.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: Not provided in source content.

Affiliation Email addresses: Not provided in source content.

Correspondence Address: Not provided in source content (Refer to Harrison et al., 2006, for correspondence details).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: 2006 (Year of primary publication).

The scale items are publicly available as an appendix to the published article, suggesting they may be used for non-commercial academic research, provided the original source is properly cited. The instrument is also included in a publicly accessible compendium of measures related to violence against women. The original PDF can be downloaded here: http://www.svri.org/measures.pdf

Reference’s

Harrison‚ A.‚ O’Sullivan‚ L.‚ Hoffman‚ S.‚ Dolezal‚ C.‚ & Morrell‚ R. (2006). Gender Role and Relationship Norms among Young Adults in South Africa: Measuring the Context of Masculinity and HIV Risk. Journal of Urban Health‚ 83(4)‚ 709-722.

Items of the Gender Roles and Relationship Norms

IMPORTANT: The following scale items must be preserved in their original language and must not be changed in any way.

1. If my partner came to my home and I was not there‚ I would be in trouble
2. I have sometimes had sex with my partner when I did not want to
3. If he felt that I was with someone else‚ my partner would beat me
4. My partner sometimes ends up forcing me to do something I don’t want to do
5. My partner would beat me if I went somewhere without telling him
6. My partner sometimes gets angry in such a way that he hits me

1. If I went to my partner’s home and she was not there‚ she would be in trouble
2. My partner has sometimes had sex with me when she did not want to
3. If I felt that my partner was with someone else‚ I would beat her
4. I sometimes end up forcing my partner to do something she doesn’t want to do
5. I would beat my partner if she went somewhere without telling me
6. I sometimes get angry in such a way that I hit my partner

1. We come to agreements together about what we want to do
2. Both partners have a right to a say making decisions in a relationship
3. It is a good thing that women now have more rights than ever before
4. No one partner should have more power than the other in a relationship

1. I wish we both initiated sex equally
2. A girlfriend should tell her boyfriend what she likes and doesn’t like
3. We are both free to say if we don’t want sex
4. It is very important that a woman be as happy as a man in a relationship

1. Men cannot live with just one girlfriend
2. Only a bad girl shows that she likes sex a lot
3. If a girl initiates sex it is because she has other boyfriends
4. A woman who wants to have sex is failing to control herself
5. Boys usually leave a girl if she falls pregnant
6. It is important for a girl to “prove her virginity” by ha‎ving sex with her boyfriend
7. If a boy tells a girl today that he loves her‚ she doesn’t wait very long to tell him that she loves him too
8. If a woman refuses sex she usually doesn’t mean it
9. It’s a woman’s job to bring up condom use before sex

1. It is most important for us to take time to talk about our problems and discuss our relationship
2. I’m planning good things with my partner
3. I am very much in love with my partner
4. We are taking care of each other well
5. In our relationship there is respect and enjoyment

1. If I did not have a partner at all‚ I would not feel like a real person
2. I need someone who is going to love me
3. I cannot live without my partner for even 1 day
4. I don’t think a person can survive without ha‎ving someone to love
5. I would die for my love
6. I put all my hopes in my boyfriend/girlfriend