Revalidating a Measure of Parents’ Attitudes Toward Gender and Sexuality Diversity-Inclusive Curricula in an Australian National Sample

ABSTRACT

This paper details revalidation of a higher-order (HO) version of the Parental Attitudes Toward Inclusiveness Instrument (PATII), measuring parents’ attitudes toward curricular inclusivity of gender and sexuality diversity. The 48-item scale includes two HO factors: Supports and Barriers, and one first-order factor: Parental Capability. Responses from parents of government-school students (N = 2093) provided evidence for scale reliability, validity, and measurement invariance.

KEYWORDS:

• Construct validity
• exploratory structural equation modeling
• gender and sexuality diversity
• parents
• education

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of Western Sydney University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Throughout the manuscript, we use the term gender and sexuality diverse/diversity in reference to individuals who do not identify as heterosexual and/or cisgender and related, inclusive subject matter. We acknowledge that using the word “diverse” within this term can have the unintended consequence of centering heterosexual and cisgender identities. Nonetheless, we have mindfully employed this term to respect and reflect the growing number of identities beyond lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ); to acknowledge the fluid nature of gender and sexuality; and to include individuals who choose not to label their gender/sexuality identities. We use the acronym GSD as shorthand for the term gender and sexuality diverse (i.e., used when speaking about individuals/families), but not for the term gender and sexuality diversity.

2. The term parent/parents is used throughout this paper to encapsulate all carers and guardians of children.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [project DP180101676].