The Bem Sex-Role Inventory

Pedhazur and Tetenbaum speculated that factor structures from self-ratings of the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI) personality traits would be different from factor structures from desirability ratings of the same traits. To explore this hypothesis, both desirability ratings of BSRI traits (both for a man and for a woman) and self-ratings were obtained from the same sample and factor analyzed. Factor analyses performed on the three sets of ratings of the 40 BSRI traits (self-ratings, desirability ratings for a man, and desirability ratings for a woman) confirmed that the factors across ratings were diverse. Thus, the underlying constructs must be studied independently. Predictive discriminant analyses replicated the finding that two traits alone ( Masculine and Feminine) provided nearly all of the discrimination of males and females in the sample when self-ratings were employed. Also, predictive discriminant analyses revealed that the classification of participants into gender groups was very accurate using self-ratings but deteriorated remarkably when using the desirability ratings.