The Revised Attitudes Toward Sexuality Inventory<\/strong> (R-ATSI; Patton & Mannison, 1995) is a specialized psychometric instrument constructed to evaluate multifaceted sociosexual beliefs, with particular emphasis on rape myth acceptance<\/a>, sexual coercion, developmental sexuality, and gender role stereotyping. Developed in response to emerging public health and psychological discourse surrounding sexual violence, sexually transmitted infections (STIs<\/a>), and unintended pregnancy during the 1980s and 1990s, the R-ATSI refines an earlier 72-item curriculum evaluation questionnaire down to a 40-item self-report inventory. The instrument utilizes a forced-choice 6-point Likert response format ranging from Strongly Agree<\/em> to Strongly Disagree<\/em>, systematically omitting a neutral midpoint to compel respondents toward decisive evaluative positions. Psychometric evaluation of the R-ATSI reveals a solid dimensional architecture anchored by three primary, empirically reliable factors: Attitudes Toward Sexual Coercion and Assault<\/em> (12 items), Attitudes Toward Sexuality Issues<\/em> (8 items), and Attitudes Toward Gender Roles<\/em> (5 items), alongside exploratory items addressing broader sociosexual domains. The scale exhibits robust internal consistency, yielding an overall Cronbach’s alpha of .85, with subscale alphas spanning .68 to .85. Construct and known-groups validity have been demonstrated through significant gender differences across coercion and gender-role items, as well as documented sensitivity to educational interventions in university human sexuality courses. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric exposition of the R-ATSI, detailing its theoretical lineage, factorial integrity, diagnostic scoring algorithms, and ongoing utility across developmental, educational, and social psychological research.<\/p>\n Revised Attitudes Toward Sexuality Inventory, R-ATSI, sexual coercion, rape myth acceptance, gender role stereotyping, psychometrics, sexuality education, sexual assault attitudes, scale validation, factor analysis<\/p>\n The Revised Attitudes Toward Sexuality Inventory was conceptualized, psychometrically validated, and refined by:<\/p>\n The primary purpose of the Revised Attitudes Toward Sexuality Inventory is to quantify the cognitive structures, belief frameworks, and normative judgments that individuals maintain regarding human sexuality, with an analytical lens trained on sexual coercion, interpersonal power dynamics, and societal gender expectations. Originating in tertiary educational contexts, the inventory was initially engineered to assess longitudinal attitudinal shifts resulting from formal instruction in human sexuality (Patton & Mannison, 1993, 1994). However, its functional utility rapidly expanded into clinical, sociological, and forensic investigative domains.<\/p>\n From an applied perspective, the R-ATSI addresses several pressing empirical and social imperatives:<\/p>\n The theoretical rationale rests on the principle that coercive sexual behavior does not occur in a sociocultural vacuum; rather, it is mediated and legitimized by prevailing cognitive schemas, rape supportive cultures, and institutionalized double standards. By providing a multidimensional, psychometrically defensible assessment, the R-ATSI allows researchers to map the interconnections between macro-level cultural norms and micro-level individual endorsements of coercion.<\/p>\n The psychological construct evaluated by the R-ATSI is multidimensional sociosexual attitudes, defined as organized affective, cognitive, and evaluative predispositions toward sexual practices, behavioral consent, gender norms, and institutional regulation of sexual conduct. Unlike unidimensional measures of sexual conservatism or eroticism, the R-ATSI approaches sexuality as an ideological and behavioral nexus where power, interpersonal morality, and bodily autonomy intersect.<\/p>\n This dimension encompasses belief systems that justify, minimize, or mischaracterize non-consensual sexual pressure, physical force, and acquaintance rape. It includes distinct facets of rape myth acceptance<\/a> (Burt, 1980):<\/p>\n This subscale evaluates tolerance, permissiveness, and non-judgmental acceptance regarding diverse expressions of human sexuality across the developmental spectrum and social domains:<\/p>\n This dimension examines adherence to rigid, patriarchal sex-role standards, double standards governing behavioral propriety, and ideological opposition to non-heteronormative identity expressions:<\/p>\n The construction of the R-ATSI is grounded in several convergent social and psychological theories: feminist analyses of sexual violence, Martha Burt’s rape culture model, social learning theory<\/a> (Bandura, 1977), and gender schema theory<\/a> (Bem, 1981).<\/p>\n Feminist psychopathology and criminological theory (Brownmiller, 1975) posit that sexual assault is neither a biological inevitability nor primarily a crime of uncontrollable sexual desire; rather, it constitutes a structural assertion of power, control, and intimidation designed to preserve male dominance. Martha Burt (1980) formalized this paradigm psychometrically by articulating how cultural myths—defined as false, stereotyped, or prejudicial beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists—function as cognitive buffers that legitimize sexual aggression. The R-ATSI incorporates Burt’s foundational categories (Sexual Conservatism, Rape Myth Acceptance, Interpersonal Violence, and Sex Role Stereotyping) and operationalizes them within dating contexts familiar to late adolescents and emerging adults.<\/p>\n According to sexual script theory<\/a> (Simon & Gagnon, 1986), sexual behavior is orchestrated by cultural scenarios, interpersonal scripts, and intrapsychic schemas that dictate who does what, when, where, and why. In Western patriarchal cultures, traditional heteronormative scripts assign men the proactive role of sexual aggressor or pursuer and cast women as passive gatekeepers. The R-ATSI measures adherence to scripts that obscure affirmative consent, such as the myth of token female resistance (the script claiming women say “no” when they mean “yes”) and the transactional debt script (the premise that romantic or monetary investments demand sexual remuneration).<\/p>\n Under attribution theory<\/a> (Heider, 1958; Weiner, 1985) and the just-world hypothesis<\/a> (Lerner, 1980), individuals display cognitive motivations to attribute blame to victims rather than perpetrators. By concluding that a victim engaged in provocative dress, careless alcohol intake, or consensual necking, observers preserve the comforting illusion that sexual victimization is avoidable and non-random. The R-ATSI captures these defensive cognitive attributions across multiple contextual scenarios.<\/p>\n The construct, criterion-related, and ecological validity of the R-ATSI have been verified across progressive developmental phases and empirical investigations (Patton & Mannison, 1993, 1994, 1995).<\/p>\n Initial item pools (comprising 72 items across 10 categories) were derived from psychometrically validated inventories, including Burt’s (1980) scales, Spence et al.’s (1973) Attitudes Toward Women Scale<\/em>, Herek’s (1988) measures of attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, and Feild’s (1978) rape attitude measures. Content validity was established via independent expert panels consisting of university-level human sexuality professors and secondary school sexual health educators. Items exhibiting archaic phrasing, ambiguous colloquialisms, or ceiling\/floor effects were systematically adjusted or excised (Hall, Howard, & Boezio, 1986; Patton & Mannison, 1995).<\/p>\n Robust evidence for construct validity is demonstrated through consistent, statistically significant gender differentiation across the underlying dimensions:<\/p>\n The inventory has repeatedly documented high sensitivity to educational interventions. In pre- and post-test investigations of university students enrolled in human sexuality curricula (N<\/em> = 115; Patton & Mannison, 1993, 1994), completion of coursework resulted in statistically significant reductions in rape myth acceptance, decreased victim-blaming attributions, and elevated endorsement of sexual pluralism, proving the instrument’s utility for longitudinal program evaluation<\/span>.<\/p>\n The reliability of the R-ATSI has been confirmed using standard psychometric indices of internal consistency across multiple student and community cohorts.<\/p>\n Psychometric testing conducted by Patton and Mannison (1995) yielded the following Cronbach’s alpha<\/a> coefficients:<\/p>\n Item-total correlation analyses confirmed that all factor-defining items correlated positively with their respective subscale composites. The elimination of ambiguous items from the 72-item precursor significantly reduced measurement error, attenuating response fatigue and stabilizing item variance.<\/p>\n The structural dimensionality of the R-ATSI was established via exploratory factor analysis (EFA<\/a>) with orthogonal and oblique rotations (Patton & Mannison, 1995), conducted to condense the original 72-item, 10-domain matrix into a stable latent structure.<\/p>\n Factor analytical procedures revealed three distinct, theoretically coherent factors that accounted for the majority of shared variance, while two minor latent factors exhibited unstable or underdetermined structures:<\/p>\n The remaining items within the 40-item instrument capture complementary facets of sexuality (such as AIDS stigma, child sexual abuse attributions, and gender equity laws) that contribute to the aggregate inventory score (α = .85) while functioning as exploratory indicators in granular social psychological analyses<\/span>.<\/p>\n The technical parameters and administration guidelines for the R-ATSI are detailed below:<\/p>\n The Revised Attitudes Toward Sexuality Inventory was formalized in 1995<\/strong> following preliminary empirical testing in 1993 and 1994. The instrument was developed within an academic research institution (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia) and published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Sex Education and Therapy<\/em> (now the American Journal of Sexuality Education<\/em>).<\/p>\n The scale is generally accessible without licensing fees for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical evaluation, and dissertation investigations. Researchers wishing to reproduce, modify, or translate the inventory for empirical studies are advised to contact the primary author:<\/p>\nKeywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
Factor 1: Attitudes Toward Sexual Coercion and Assault<\/h3>\n
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Factor 2: Attitudes Toward Sexuality Issues<\/h3>\n
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Factor 3: Attitudes Toward Gender Roles<\/h3>\n
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Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
Feminist Theory and Rape Culture Models<\/h3>\n
Social Learning and Script Theory<\/h3>\n
Cognitive Consistency and Attribution Theory<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Content and Face Validity<\/h3>\n
Known-Groups and Construct Validity<\/h3>\n
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Sensitivity to Change (Interventional Validity)<\/h3>\n
Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Standard Error of Measurement and Stability<\/h3>\n
Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Factor Extraction and Loadings<\/h3>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
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References<\/h2>\n
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13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)<\/h2>\n