Male Role Norms Inventory

Ronald F. Levant and colleagues developed the Male Role Norms Inventory (MRNI), which measures seven theoretically derived norms of traditional masculinity ideology: Avoidance of Femininity, Fear and Hatred of Homosexuals, Self-Reliance, Aggression, Achievement/Status, Non-Relational Attitudes Toward Sex, and Restrictive Emotionality. It also includes a Non-Traditional Attitudes subscale.

The MRNI consists of 57 normative statements to which subjects indicate their degree of agreement/ disagreement on 7-point Likert-type scales. Examples of MRNI items: “A man should do whatever it takes to be admired and respected.” “A boy should be allowed to quit a game if he is losing.”

Scores are obtained by adding up the raw scores on individual items for each subscale and then dividing by the number of items for that subscale. For each traditional subscale, the range is 1–7, with higher scores indicating greater endorsement of traditional masculinity ideology. To obtain the Total Traditional score, add up raw scores on the six traditional subscales (i.e., excluding the Non-Traditional Attitudes subscale) and divide by 45. For the Non-Traditional Attitudes subscale, the range is also 1–7, but higher scores indicate greater endorsement of nontraditional masculinity ideology.

The Cronbach alpha coefficients of the subscales of the original MRNI and the newly developed MRNI-R are, respectively, Avoidance of Femininity (.77, .85); Fear and Hatred of Homosexuals (.54, .91); Self-Reliance (.54, .78); Aggression (.52, .80); Achievement/Status (.67, .84.); Non-Relational Attitudes Toward Sex (.69, .79); Restrictive Emotionality (.75, .86); Non-Traditional Attitudes Toward Masculinity (.57, not used in MRNI-R); and Total Traditional scale (.84, .96).

The test-retest reliability of the MRNI (Total Traditional scale) over a 3-month time period for men was .65, and for women, .72.

Discriminant construct validity was assessed by examining the correlation of the MRNI Total Traditional scale with a theoretically distinct measure of gender—the short form of the Personal Attributes Scale (PAQ). We hypothesized that the MRNI would not be significantly correlated with PAQ and found that the MRNI Total Traditional scale was not related to the PAQ in a college student sample (for men, r = .06 with M, or the Masculinity scale; for females, r = .08 with F, or the Femininity scale). Convergent construct validity was assessed by examining the correlation of the MRNI Total Traditional scale with two [Page 564]theoretically related measures of gender. We hypothesized that the MRNI would be correlated with each of these two measures and did find significant moderate correlations between the MRNI Total Traditional scale and both the Gender Role Conflict Scale-I (r = .52, p < .001) and the Masculine Gender Role Stress Scale (r = .52, p < .001).