Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Parenting: Exploratory, Confirmatory, and Invariance Analyses of Two Psychometric Scales

Abstract

In this article we describe the process of construction and validation of two instruments devised to measure attitudes toward same-sex parenting. One instrument focuses on evaluations of the parents and the other on evaluations of their child's development. Both instruments are presented after an adoption vignette in which the sexual orientation and relational status of the prospective adoptive parents and the gender of the adopted child were varied. First, we determined the factorial structure of the two instruments using exploratory factor analysis. Second, we validated the observed factorial structures using confirmatory factor analysis. Third, we tested the measurement invariance of this model across the prospective adoptive parents' sexual orientation, relational status, and gender of their adopted child using multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis. The two instruments showed good psychometric qualities and proved to be reliable resources to measure diverse aspects of attitudes toward same-sex parenting.

KEYWORDS:

• attitudes
• gay and lesbian parents
• psychometric scales
• same-sex parenting
• vignette

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a doctoral grant awarded to the first author by the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/41752/2007).