Australian attitudes towards homosexuality: a comparison with college students

The Heterosexual Attitudes Towards Homosexuality scale, previously undertaken by college students in an Australian provincial city, Toowoomba, was administered to 689 members of the general public in the same city. As in the college student sample, two factors were identified, Acceptance and Normality. Sex, age, church attendance, and education variables were found to be significant on the Acceptance factor only; the female, younger, more educated, and less frequent church attenders held more accepting attitudes. For all categories of analysis, prevailing attitudes on Acceptance were less conservative, while attitudes towards Normality of homosexuality remained uniformly restrictive. When compared with college students, the results revealed far more conservative attitudes. Attitudes towards homosexuality, therefore, involve multidimensional concepts; the effects of personal characteristics on these dimensions and with different populations should be discussed separately.