From: bickis@skmath3.usask.ca ("M. Bickis")
Subject: Re: The Bem test
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada
Date: 12 Jan 93 22:34:23 GMT

In article <1ihvqfINN6q2@agate.berkeley.edu> Thomas Gramstad
<thomas@math.uio.no > (or is it Peter Sellmer (peter@watcsc.uwaterloo.ca) ?)
writes:
>Basically the Bem Sex Role Inventory illustrates that
>gender ('psychological sex', biologically determined)
>is an arbitrary cultural invention.  I'll append the
>Bem Sex Role Inventory at the end of this message. It
>has been posted on the net before.

I am always happy to see such postings for they provide excellent
examples for my classes of how *not* to do things.  I will have to
look up the original references to verify that the Bem Sex Role
Inventory is really as bad as it sounds.  However, for sake of
argument, let's assume that the article accurately describes it.
There are so many flaws in its construction and interpretation that I
couldn't possibly list them all, but here are a few critical comments,
and some questions that the readers of soc.feminism might want to ask
themselves, (or ask Sandra Bem.)

1. Why is it assumed that a multidimensional observation such as
gender perception can be adequately summarized by a single
one-dimensional score?  Did Bem do anything like a factor analysis or
discriminant analysis on her data to verify that?  Rather than

> ...   circumventing the idea that somehow
>men and women are "opposite" sexes.

as the poster suggests, the scoring procedure, by giving negative
scores to "masculine" attributes and positive ones to "feminine" ones,
seems to *presume* that these are opposites.

2.  On what basis does she classify

>+1 < AS :  Feminine
>+0.5 < AS < +1 : near-feminine
>-0.5 < AS < +0.5 : androgynous
>-0.5 > AS > -1 : near-masculine
>-1 < AS : Masculine

Is it because 0.5 and 1 are round numbers?  Does Bem have any
empirical evidence to indicate that this range of scores corresponds
to what people would consider as feminine, androgynous, or masculine
personalities?

The empirical distributions:
>               Males  (N=444)              Females (N=279)
>%feminine             5%                         29%
>%near-feminine        5%                         18%
>%androgynous         44%                         39%
>%near-masculine      16%                          8%
>%masculine           30%                          7%

do *not* suggest, as the poster claims, that

>1) the curves are pretty
>much the same for both sexes, and 2) the sex-role label only sticks to
>about half the people!

Rather, one should note that only 10% of the males are on the feminine
side, and 15% of the females are on the masculine side.  This seems
like pretty good discrimination for such an arbitrarily constructed
test.  The large proportion in the "androgynous" category suggests
that perhaps the boundaries of the categories have not been drawn in
the right place.  How would it fall out if, for example, we were to
separate those with negative scores from those with positive scores?
(I applied the test to my own self-perception, and to my perception of
my wife.  I got a slightly negative score, my wife got a slightly
positive one, but they were both in the "androgynous" category.  I'm
going to ask my wife to score herself and me, to see how they compare
to my assessments.)

3.  The poster goes on to say

>In psych terms, this labelling of behaviors
>by gender just doesn't cut it as far as construct validity goes.

echoing his introductory comment that

>Basically the Bem Sex Role Inventory [BSRI] illustrates that
>gender ('psychological sex', biologically determined)
>is an arbitrary cultural invention.

This is a bit of a leap of faith.  Let us grant that the BSRI does not
"cut it" as far as construct validity goes.  The corollary would be to
toss out the BSRI.  The question about whether gender is a valid and
useful construct has not been addressed.  All we can see is that if
there is such a thing, the BSRI does not measure it very well.  If you
want to know how cold it is outside, a barometer is not going to help
you very much.  That doesn't mean that temperature is not a valid
construct.

4. Even if one assumes that gender can be reduced to a one-dimensional
score, why does it follow that all the attributes in the inventory
should be given equal weight?  For example "individualistic" and
"aggressive" are both listed as "masculine" attributes, which would
suggest that a free thinking wimp would be constructed as just as
masculine as a conformist soldier.  "Loves children" and "childlike"
are both listed as feminine attributes, which would suggest that
mature maternal women just aren't as feminine as immature ones.  Some
attributes appear in different guises, sometimes with different
genders.  "Self-reliant" and "self-sufficient" both appear as
masculine, whereas "cheerful" is feminine, yet "happy" is neuter.
"Defends own beliefs" is masculine whereas "loyal" is feminine.  I
guess that would make soldiers, politicians, and bureaucrats who stick
together to protect their organization somewhat feminine compared to
traitors and turncoats.  Of course, these are female dominated
occupations :-) :-).

5. Where did the gender categories come from?

>Now, the thing to note about the above scheme is that they were all
>selected by a large (N ~ 1500) sample of college students to be more
>desirable for the sex listed.  That is, this measures how much they
>line up with our sex role ideas.

Well, the bias introduced by sampling only college students hardly
needs mentioning.  At that age, people might have rather simplistic
views about sex and gender.  Another question is *how* these were
selected.  Did Bem give them the above list of adjetives and have them
rate them as masculine, feminine, or neuter; or were these adjectives
suggested by the respondents?  Was the partition unanimous, or was
some voting procedure used?  Presumably, some of the adjectives showed
a clearer gender division than others.  Should that not be taken into
account in the scoring?  Moreover, there is a difference between
finding an attribute *desirable* and expecting to find it.  I fail to
see why an attribute like "gullible" or "jealous" would be desirable
in *either* sex.  Or how "doesn't use profanity" or "sympathetic"
makes one less masculine.

6.  There would be a difference between perceptions of ideals and
self-concept.  This would lead to smaller scores for self-assessments
than for the sample asked about "desirable" characteristics.  I may
think that "makes decisions easily" is a highly desirable trait for a
man, yet I might still only give myself a score of 4 for that trait.

7.  The *meanings* of the adjectives may depend on whether one is
thinking about a man or a woman. This would affect how they are
scored.  If I am comparing men and women, I might associate
"flatterable" with the woman, but that doesn't mean I can't think of
"flatterable" men, and see "flatterability" as a masculine attribute.

8... and so on.

The BSRI is the sort of thing one might expect to find in magazines
available at grocery-store check-outs.  I am amazed that such things
appear in learned journals.

>If Dr. Bem is out there in net.land (or anyone around her), please
>tell me if I've missed the mark.

I can only hope so.  Perhaps this posting is a misinterpretation of
Bem's work.  Otherwise, I recommend she consult a competent
statistician to help with her research.



>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>bickis@math.usask.ca<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Mik Bickis       \,,,       .*#*.  \    University of Saskatchewan
Department of        \,,,  ^\\|//^  ```\   Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
Mathematics & Statistics \   )|(        ```\   Canada      S7N 0W0
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<S|A|S|K|A|T|C|H|E|W|A|N|>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



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