Escala de atitudes frente à homossexualidade (ATHO): construção e produção de evidências de validade

Abstract

The objective of this article was to produce evidence of validity for a measure of homophobia. For that, an adaptation process of items of a subtle and manifested homophobia scale was developed and an online survey was carried out with 985 Brazilian individuals, over 18 years of age and with an average age of 26.01 years (SD = 7.52). In addition to this instrument, a socio-identity questionnaire, a scale of prejudice against sexual and gender diversity and an internalized homophobia scale were applied. With the selected sample, an Exploratory Factorial Analysis and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis were performed, in addition to measures to identify evidence of criterion validity, convergent and concurrent. The results pointed to the possibility of two models on the Scale of Attitudes towards Homosexuality (ATHO), one with two factors, Distal Attitudes (α = 0.855) and Proximal Attitudes (α = 0.819), and the other with a single factor (α = 0.881), both with satisfactory adjustments. The correlation with another one measure of prejudice against sexual diversity was significant, positive and of high magnitude (r = 0.851). Men, residents of small or medium-sized cities, people who studied up to high school and heterosexual individuals had significantly higher scores in ATHO than peer groups. These results attest that there are signs of validity on the scale, indicative of good psychometric properties and that it can be used to investigate homophobia.