Abstract: As a part of acquired social gender, sex role not only plays an important role in the development of individuals, but also influences the evolution of national characteristics. Since the sex-role ideology among Chinese college students is undergoing great changes along with the developing society, existing sex role scales may not be suitable for tapping such changes any longer. In the present study we developed a new sex role inventory for Chinese college students and examined the changes of sex-role ideology among Chinese college students.
Following standard procedures, a scale was developed by selecting 90 sex role- indicated words (35 positive words on masculinity, 35 positive words on femininity, and 20 neutral words) from 1700 relevant words, which was then tested on 351 college students (179 males, 172 females). After item discrimination analysis and exploratory factor analysis on the initial results, 50 items in the scale were retained to constitute three subscales. The Masculinity Subscale includes 16 items and four factors: leadership, masculinity, rationality, and generosity. The Femininity Subscale includes 16 items and three factors: empathy, femininity, thrift and careful. The Neutral Subscale includes 18 items. Further, a sample of 5008 college students (2280 males, 2728 females) was selected for reexamination of the 50-item scale. 5% random subsample (106 males, 127 females) from the 5008 dataset was analyzed with Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The results successfully replicated the factor structure identified above and the fit indices indicated a satisfactory goodness-of-fit. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of the Masculinity and the Femininity subscales were 0.89 and 0.84, respectively. The retest reliability were 0.82 (M) and 0.80 (F). Demonstrative validity and expert validity were also satisfactory. The vocabulary in this new 50-item sex role inventory for Chinese college students (CSRI-50) differs substantially from other existing sex role scales: Chinese man is characteristic of the trait of rationality; Chinese women is characteristic of the trait of expression, as well as some traditional Chinese traits such as thrift, industrious and careful. Within the subsample, the proportion of Androgynous, Undifferentiated, and traditional sex role (including both of the Masculinity and Femininity) are about one third respectively. Comparing to previous studies, males showed weaker Masculinity traits, and females showed weaker Femininity traits, while the Androgynous and the Undifferentiated increased proportionally. However, the proportion of Masculinity among males was higher than that among females, and the proportion of Femininity among females was higher than that in males, indicating the continuing influence of the traditional culture.

Key words: sex role, inventory development, vocabulary changes, change of sex role