Demonstrating incremental validity, the TMF predicted gender and sexual orientation in a superior way than established adjective-based measures. Moreover, the TMF correlated moderately with other gender-related measures. As expected the TMF reliably measured a one-dimensional masculinity-femininity construct. Studies 1–2 used known-groups approaches (participants differing in gender and sexual orientation) to validate the scale and provide evidence of its convergent validity. We introduce a new and brief scale, the Traditional Masculinity-Femininity (TMF) scale, designed to assess central facets of self-ascribed masculinity-femininity. We argue that it is useful to be able to measure these two core concepts in a reliable, valid, and parsimonious way.
Although omitted in later version, Bem's original Sex Role Inventory included the items “masculine” and “feminine” in addition to more specific gender-stereotypical attributes.
Several scales have been developed to measure fundamental aspects of gender stereotypes (e.g., agency and communion, competence and warmth, or instrumentality and expressivity). Gender stereotype theory suggests that men are generally perceived as more masculine than women, whereas women are generally perceived as more feminine than men. Department of Social and Economic Psychology, University of Koblenz and Landau, Landau, Germany.
