Sexual Prejudice in Sport Scale: A New Measure

ABSTRACT

This study describes the process of developing and validating the Sexual Prejudice in Sport Scale (SPSS), which is a multidimensional instrument developed to assess attitudes toward lesbians and gay men (LG) in sports. The authors conducted two studies: first, to establish the factor structure of the SPSS on 297 heterosexual athletes; and, second, to test the reliability and validity of the resulting 19-item scale on a sample of 311 heterosexual and 160 LG athletes. Exploratory factor analysis of an initial item pool yielded three factors: open rejection, which assesses the blatant prejudice expressed toward LG people; denial of visibility, which evaluates attitude toward the coming out of LG people; and gendering performance, which corresponds to gender stereotypes about performance/skills of LG people. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the stability of the SPSS. The authors documented internal consistency, test-retest stability, and convergent/divergent validity. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual prejudice
• sport
• coming out
• negative attitudes
• lesbian and gay athletes
• homosexuality

Acknowledgments

The authors express their sincere gratitude to the athletes who participated in this study. All authors who contributed significantly to the work have been identified.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Authors did not have financial support for the conduct of the research and preparation of the article.