A preliminary scale for assessing attitudes toward homosexuals in the military

This paper reports a factor analytical study of responses to statements of attitudes concerning lesbians and gay men in the military by 72 23.4-yr.-old members of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Using exploratory factor analysis with an oblique rotation four factors were found which accounted for 64.9% of the total common variance. A factor labeled Trust accounted for 40.6% of the common variance, Comfort accounted for 8.7%, Acceptance accounted for 8.2%, and the fourth factor, Threat, accounted for 7.5%. Cronbach a ranged from .63 to .78. Validity was .75 when scores were correlated with those on the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men scale, supporting the 4-factor interpretation. It is recommended that additional factor analyses be performed to further investigate the validity of the four factors and that of the entire scale.