The Factor Structure of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI): Confirmatory Analysis of Long and Short Forms

Abstract

In the early 1970s Constantinople wrote a seminal article that subsequently led to the elaboration of the construct of psychological androgyny. The Bem Sex-Role Inventory is a popular measure of the construct, but the measure remains controversial. We explored construct validity of scores from the measure using confirnatory factor analytic methods on data from 791 subjects. Measurement characteristics of both long and short forms were investigated, in that the short form has paradoxically been shown to generally yield more reliable scores.