THE MEASUREMENT OF GENDER-ROLE ATTITUDES A Review and Commentary

This article reviews measures of gender-role attitudes with an emphasis on The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS; Spence & Helmreich, 1972); the Sex Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES; Beere, King, Beere, & King, 1984); the Modern Sexism Scale (MS; Swim, Aikin, Hall, & Hunter, 1995); the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996), and the Children's Occupational Activity Trait-Attitude Measure (COAT-AM; Bigler, Liben, Lobliner, & Yekel, 1995). The discussion of gender-role attitude measures focuses on the following themes: psychometric criteria; theoretical and conceptual distinctions among measures; domains of attitudes and behaviors included; relationship to other measures; and the meaningfulness and relevance of items. Gender-role attitude scales are viewed as measuring gender-role ideology in a particular sociohistorical context; context-specificity is viewed as contributing to the proliferation of scales, and as limiting the usefulness of scales across cultural and temporal boundaries.     

PSYCHOTHERAPISTS'KNOWLEDGE ABOUT AND ATTITUDES TOWARD SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIM CLIENTS

The present research investigated the question of how therapists'attitudes toward sexual assault victims predict their inferences about and treatment of clients. In addition, this study asked the following questions: (a) What percentage of female psychotherapy clients have been victims of sexual assault? (b) What treatment approaches are therapists using with victims and what attitudes toward victims do these therapists hold? (c) On the average, which demographic groups of therapists hold the most positive views of victims and are the most knowledgeable about working with victims? The results of the study indicated that therapists who held negative attitudes toward victims were more likely to endorse victim-blaming themes and therapeutic treatments which blame victims for sexual assault. Of therapists'current female clients, 18.5% ( n = 257) had been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. On the average, therapists were knowledgeable about working with victims and showed positive attitudes toward victims.     

Building Interorganizational Relationships That Build Nations

This paper describes relationship building among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in a civil society effort. It presents the results of an interorganizational network analysis of 17 Croatian civil society organizations that participated in the 2000 parliamentary election campaign. The research analyzes network relationships including density, structural holes, and centrality, considering the nature of these relationships as a function of choice of communication channels and strength of ties. The results of this study describe the communication roles of various organizations during the transformation from a totalitarian state to a fledgling civil society.