Evaluation of the Social Roles Questionnaire Using Sport Management Students

Purpose

Men continue to hold the majority of management positions in sport organizations, including senior management positions. Additionally, men dominate the ranks as both faculty and students in sport management programs. In an effort to make sport management a more viable career option that supports women and men, researchers have engaged in studies to examine gender role stereotyping. Gender role stereotyping can act to constrain women and men from management positions in sport. In particular, women are often stereotyped as not having the characteristics and skills perceived as necessary to be successful managers or leaders. By exploring gender role stereotyping a better understanding of attitudes toward gender roles held by sport management students, faculty, managers and administrators in the field can be attained. The Social Roles Questionnaire (SRQ) was developed to address current limitations in instruments assessing attitudes toward gender roles. Previous scales addressing gender role attitudes have approached gender as a binary construct (i.e., some roles are appropriate only for men or only for women) which may fail to recognize a more nuanced understanding of gender roles. The SRQ is a 13-item scales that measures attitudes toward gender roles based on two factors, gender linked attitudes and gender transcendent attitudes. The purpose of the current research project was to evaluate the underlying factor structure of the SRQ when using a population of sport management students.

Methods

The participants were undergraduate and graduate sport management students (N = 248). Fifty-nine women and 189 men completed the survey. When completed by a sport management student population, exploratory factor analysis using principal component analysis and varimax rotation revealed that the SRQ does not maintain a two factor structure with all items included.

Analysis/Results

A final two factor solution accounting for 55% of the total variance was obtained with only 6 items remaining. Three items loaded on the gender linking factor and three loaded on the gender transcendent factor. Of the remaining items, the reliability analysis indicated only one factor (gender linked) as reliable (Α=.74).

Conclusions

Future research must address the limitations of measuring sport management students attitudes toward gender roles using the SRQ. In addition, researchers should work toward development of instruments that will better evaluate gender role attitudes within sport management populations.