Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS)
Overview
The Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS) was originally developed in 1972 by Dr. Janet T. Spence and Dr. Robert Helmreich at the University of Texas. It was designed to tap beliefs about the rights and roles of women, in comparison to men. It attempts to include statements that describe roles and behaviors in all major areas of activity in which normative expectations could be, in principle, the same for men and women.
Methodology/validity
The original instrument consists of 55 items, each of which has four response options, ranging from "agree strongly" to "disagree strongly." A shorter, fifteen-item version of the scale was developed in 1978 and is the most widely-used version. The most frequent use of the scale involves obtaining a numerical index score for each individual. The 15-item version has been found to have a correlation of .91 with the original 55-item AWS in a sample of U.S. college students. The Cronbach alpha of the 15-item form has been found to be .89, again in a sample of college students. For example, it has been found that women score higher (are more likely to support women's rights) than men and that college students score higher than their same-sex parent.
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