ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1569382
This article is part of the Research TopicBreaking Barriers in LGBT+ Health: Innovations and InsightsView all 12 articles
Psychometric Inspection of an Internalized Homonegativity Measure
Provisionally accepted
- 1Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland
- 2Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Lucerne, Switzerland
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Internalized homonegativity (IH) is a substantively important construct linked to various healthrelated quality of life indicators. Despite IH's prominence in the homosexuality literature, however, several measurement challenges are posed to advancing its empirical evidence base. This study brought modern psychometric methods to bear on a measure of IH in a general population sample of self-reported gay, lesbian, and bisexual respondents in Switzerland (n = 988). Specifically, we used a prospective observational cross-section design with questionnaire methodology to examine three aspects of validity of a 7-item IH instrument: 1) structure validity, 2) cross-linguistic validity, and 3) "known-groups" (discriminant) validity. Our findings indicated support for the 7-item IH measure's essential unidimensionality. Furthermore, we found support for IH's measurement equivalence across German-and French-speaking regions, whereas mixed support was found for its extension to bisexual respondents. Finally, the IH measure exhibited discriminant validity, such that depression and poor self-reported health status was associated with higher IH scores. In conclusion, the IH instrument may be further used as a unidimensional measure across German-and French-speaking general populations, whereas further research should focus on extending linguistic validity and measurement equivalence in bisexual and transgender populations.
Keywords: internalized homonegativity, sexual identity, LGBTQ persons, Structural validity, Cross-linguistic validity, discriminant validity Meyer (2003) war im Lit-Verzeichnis, aber nicht im Text. Im ersten oder zweiten Absatz ergänzen? Commented [PK2R1]: Und: Sarrasin et al. (2019) war im Lit-Verzeichnis, aber nicht im Text. Braucht es nicht
Received: 31 Jan 2025; Accepted: 20 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kerry, Pfister and Krüger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Matthew James Kerry, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland
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