Abstract
Internalized homonegativity (IH) is the internalization of negative attitudes and assumptions about homosexual people by homosexual people themselves. To measure IH, Smolenski, Diamond, Ross, and Rosser (2010) and Ross, Rosser, and Smolenski (2010) revised the Reactions to Homosexuality Scale (RHS) to develop the Short Internalized Homonegativity Scale (SIHS) with eight items. Using the European Men Who Have Sex With Men Internet Survey (EMIS) data, with an analytic sample of 130,718 gay and bisexual men in 38 European countries, we confirmed the validity of the SIHS scale in both training and validation data, in strata of Ross, Berg, et al.’s (2013) three “homosexual discrimination” country clusters, of age, and of education level. However, the performance was less adequate in comparison of gay versus bisexually identified individuals. The latent SIHS structure contains only minor variations across these three strata. The seven-item scale performed as well as the eight-item scale. The SIHS is a promising candidate for standard IH measures, which is invariant across cultural, age, and educational strata.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 617-629 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Journal of Sex Research |
Volume | 55 |
Issue number | 4-5 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 13 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The EMIS was funded by Executive Agency for Health and Consumers (EAHC); Centre d’Estudis Epidemiològics sobre les ITS/HIV/SIDA de Catalunya (CEEISCat); Terrence Higgins Trust for the CHAPS partnership (England); Regione de Veneto; Robert Koch Institute; Maastricht University; German Ministry of Health; Finnish Ministry of Health; Norwegian Institute of Public Health, and the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.