Psychometric scale

The Riddle scale (also known as Riddle homophobia scale or Riddle scale of homophobia) was a psychometric scale that measured the degree to which a person is or is not homophobic. The scale was frequently used in tolerance education about anti-discriminatory attitudes regarding sexual orientation. It is named after its creator, psychologist Dorothy Riddle.

Overview

The Riddle homophobia scale was developed by Dorothy Riddle in 1973–74 while she was overseeing research for the American Psychological Association Task Force on Gays and Lesbians. The scale was distributed at talks and workshops but was not formally published for a long time; it is cited in the literature either as an (unpublished) conference presentation from 1985 or as an article from 1994. At the time it was developed, Riddle's analysis was one of the first modern classifications of attitudes towards homosexuality.[citation needed]

In that respect, the scale has served the purpose that Riddle originally had in mind: she devised the scale to explicate the continuum of attitudes toward gays and lesbians and to assess the current and desired institutional culture of an organization or a work place.

Level of measurement

The Riddle scale is an eight-term uni-dimensional Likert-type interval scale with nominal labels and no explicit zero point. Each term is associated with a set of attributes and beliefs; individuals are assigned a position on the scale based on the attributes they exhibit and beliefs they hold.

The scale is frequently divided into two parts, the 'homophobic levels of attitude' (first four terms) and the 'positive levels of attitude' (last four terms).

The scale

Discussion

Riddle's analysis has been credited for pointing out that although 'tolerance' and 'acceptance' can be seen as positive attitudes, they should actually be treated as negative because they can mask underlying fear or hatred (somebody can tolerate a baby crying on an airplane while at the same time wishing that it would stop) or indicate that there is indeed something that we need to accept, and that we are the ones with the power to reject or to accept. This observation generalizes to attitude evaluations in other areas besides sexual orientation and is one of the strengths of Riddle's study.

Although it deals mostly with adult attitudes towards difference, the model has been positioned in the cognitive developmental tradition of Piaget and Kohlberg's stages of moral development.

As a psychometric scale, the Riddle scale has been considered to have acceptable face validity but its exact psychometric properties are unknown.