Mahalik’s Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562885/

Participants also completed portions of Mahalik’s Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI).27These inventories required participants to evaluate a series of statements in the context of their own actions, feelings, and beliefs, with a 4-point response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). I reverse-coded individual items as necessary so that higher response values corresponded to stronger endorsement of conventional masculine gender norms. I calculated Cronbach α, an index of reliability to test how well the components measure the same construct, for each subscale.

I used 5 CMNI subscales: Playboy, Winning, Dominance, Risk Taking, and Violence. The 12-item Playboy subscale (α= .88) included items such as “If I could, I would frequently change sexual partners” and “Emotional involvement should be avoided when having sex.” Ten items such as “In general, I will do anything to win” and “The best feeling in the world comes from winning” made up the Winning subscale (α= .81). The Dominance subscale (α= .69) included 4 items such as “I make sure people do as I say” and “I should be in charge.” The 10-item Risk Taking subscale (α= .84) included items such as “Taking dangerous risks helps me to prove myself” and “I frequently put myself in risky situations.” Last, the 8-item Violence subscale (α= .81) included items such as “Sometimes violent action is necessary” and “I like fighting.” I constructed a global Masculine Norms scale (α= .67) by calculating the mean across all 5 CMNI subscales.

I also constructed new measures to measure actual risk-taking behavior. Participants indicated whether they had engaged in a series of activities in the past 12 months, such as “done something dangerous on a dare (like taking a risk or breaking a law) that you would not have done otherwise,” “participated in an ‘extreme’ sport (like snowboarding or bungee jumping),” “been in a serious physical fight,” or “had unprotected sexual intercourse (without using a condom).” Responses were dichotomous (no = 0, yes = 1). The alpha reliability coefficient for the 10-item Risk-Taking Behavior scale was .57.