Content validity

I've just been wondering... is this questionnaire supposed to just be able to differentiate between men and women, or is it supposed to be actually getting at gender-related *personality* differences? Because if it's the latter, I feel like some of the questions tap more into expected gender roles that society has imposed on us, rather than actual personality differences. for example, take likelihood of carrying a purse - this has one of the highest d-values of all the questions. However, do most men refuse to carry purses because of some inherent personality trait, or just because society would judge them if they did, and they're following prescribed gender roles? another question I'm wondering about is "frequency of wearing make-up."

Hi Katerina, the questionnaire is supposed to be the latter, by doing the former. By asking about things like purses, make-up, we are trying to assess an underlying gender-related personality difference. You are quite right that social factors play an extremely large role. While most people might conform to society's gender expectations, there are still some people who violate societal expectations for their gender though. It's these individual differences that are what researchers who have used Gender Diagnosticity scales in research are interested in.

The questionnaire does not address such answers though, such as whether they are just conforming to society's gender expectations or whether that is their true self, all we know is if they prefer doing it or not, but not what makes them do it. This makes the internal validity very low, or doesnt exist at all?

yea that's kind of along the lines of what I was thinking. This would make the internal validity potentially low, wouldn't it? If we don't even know if the various questions are tapping into the same concept...

I think it depends on which questions you're talking about. For example the make-up question if you ask about how much you like wearing make-up that might get closer to one's true self, whereas a question about how often you wear make-up might also be measuring the amount that you conform to society's gendered expectations of you. Perhaps you could take a look at the questions that we ended up with and see whether you think they are measuring an internal sense of self, amount one is adhering to society's expectations, or perhaps a mix of both. I think that would be an excellent thing to discuss here.

I think that, for most of the questions, the ones that are more observable (such as hobbies, having a one-night stand, or wearing make-up) are probably more heavily influenced by society, because it would be much easier for your culture to watch and judge you as to whether you are living up to its standards. Also, like you said, how the questions are phrased would also have a huge impact - asking the *chances* of having sex with a stranger, as opposed to asking the *actual* number of times it has happened, would get largely different responses (with the former being more influenced by internal factors, the latter being more influenced by society). Perhaps asking someone's wishes/preferences is a better method than asking about their actual behaviour in some domains? Like how you feel about wearing make-up versus actually doing it.