A variety of methods have been used to assess the degree to which an individual is sex-typed vs. androgynous in her/his self- concept. Bem (1972) devised the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), consisting of twenty masculine and twenty feminine personality traits. Respondents indicate the extent to which these traits describe themselves. Rather than use the entire BSRI instrument, we will include measures of employees' self-ratings for only five of the masculine and feminine traits from the BSRI (see Table 4.1).
Since it is best to use short, simple variable names in SPSS, we will simply call these trait self-ratings masc1 through masc5 and fem1 through fem5.Thus, the first ten variables in our data file will be employees' self-ratings on these five masculine and five feminine traits. These trait scores can range between 1 and 7, where
As we will see later, Sex Role Identity will be assessed by a composite of scores on these ten traits. Specifically, a person's sex role identity will be determined by the extent to which employees score low or high on the masculinity and feminity scales. It may have occurred to you that the employees' gender is an important variable to consider in recording the employee feminine/masculine trait scores. For example, we cannot assume that a high femininity score necessarily means that the individual is a woman. Indeed, as we have seen, it is possible for both men and women to score high on the femininity. By the same token, both men and women can score high on masculinity (recall that androgynous individuals score high on both masculinity and femininity). Thus, in addition to recording a given employee's femininity/masculinity scores, it is important to record that person's gender.This is accomplished easily enough by asking each employee to circle a 1 at the top of the assessment questionnaire if he is a man, and a 2 if she is a woman. Thus, assume that the 11th variable you measure is Gender, where:
You might begin thinking ahead to how the variables of sex role identity and gender are related to leadership style, work motives and performance effectiveness. Of course, the remainder of this text will explore some of these relationships. |
|||||||||