Psychometric Assessment of a Homophobia Management Scale Among Cisgender Sexual Minority Men in Midlife and Older Adulthood

Steven Meanley*, Mark Brennan-Ing, Judith A. Cook, Andre L. Brown, Sabina A. Haberlen, Frank J. Palella, Steven J. Shoptaw, Deanna Ware, James E. Egan, Mackey R. Friedman, Michael W. Plankey

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Interpersonal management of homophobic stigma (e.g., selectively constructing one’s social network; confronting stigma) is an understudied area of resilience among sexual minority people. Among a sample of cisgender sexual minority men (SMM; N = 798) in midlife and older adulthood, we assessed the psychometric properties and characterized the sociodemographic differences of our newly developed, theoryinformed homophobia management scale. Data come from the Healthy Aging substudy of the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, which is a prospective longitudinal study implemented to evaluate the natural trajectories of HIV risk and treatment among sexual minority men. Guided by the proactive coping processes model, the Healthy Aging team proposed eight items to measure homophobia management, which were included at four waves of survey data collection completed at semiannual study visits. Using factor analyses and linear regressions, we assessed our scale’s construct validity, convergent validity, and internal consistency, and characterized scores by age, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and HIV status. Factor analyses yielded a six-item scale with adequate construct validity and acceptable internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha =.69). Our final scale exhibited convergent validity given its statistically significant inverse association with internalized homophobia and positive association with psychological connections to the gay community. Bivariate differences in homophobia management emerged by age, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation but were not statistically significant in multivariable analyses. Our study provides a validated, unidimensional scale to assess homophobia management among SMM in midlife and older adulthood. We provide recommendations to improve the implementation of our scale in future surveillance.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)316-327
Number of pages12
JournalPsychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity
Volume11
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 15 2022

Funding

Our team expresses immense gratitude to the MACS participants who have continued to support our efforts. Data in this article were collected by the MACS, now the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study (MWCCS). This work was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities under grant 5R01MD010680-05 (Mackey R. Friedman and Michael W. Plankey). The arguments and conclusions from our study represent those endorsed by the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the MACS or the National Institutes of Health. MWCCS (principal investigators) received the following funding: data analysis and coordination center (D\u2019Souza, Gange, and Golub), grant U01-HL146193; Chicago-Cook County CRS (Cohen and French), grant U01-HL146245; Chicago-Northwestern CRS (Wolinsky), grant U01- HL146240; Los Angeles CRS (Detels), grant U01-HL146333; Metropolitan Washington CRS (Kassaye and Merenstein), grant U01-HL146205; and Pittsburgh CRS (Martinson and Rinaldo), grant U01-HL146208. The MWCCS is funded primarily by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, with additional co-funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute of Nursing Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose

Keywords

  • aging
  • gay and bisexual men
  • resilience
  • scale development
  • stigma

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Gender Studies
  • General Psychology

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