Peer-reviewed article
Psychometric evaluation of gender norm beliefs and attitudes among students in Ghana: evidence from the GNAS and GEM Scales.
Addo B, Akuoko KO, Dwumah P, Dapaah JM ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This is a technical psychometric study that evaluates the validity and reliability of two measurement scales (GNAS and GEM) for assessing gender norm beliefs among university students in Ghana. The study tests whether these scales work properly when used with Ghanaian students and whether they measure consistently across different student groups. While the GNAS showed acceptable properties, the GEM scale required substantial modification and showed weaker performance. The research is methodological rather than evaluating an intervention to improve child well-being.
Key points
- The adapted GNAS produced a two-factor structure with 11 items measuring beliefs about men's privileges and gender equity, with strong internal reliability
- The adapted GEM Scale was substantially modified from the original, retaining only 16 items in four factors and losing the Reproductive Health and Disease Prevention domain entirely
- Students generally rejected inequitable gender norms but showed more variable attitudes toward household authority and domestic roles
- The GNAS demonstrated metric invariance across sex and university but the GEM Scale showed weaker invariance properties across groups
- Authors recommend further validation and testing with alternative response formats before confident use in broader research or programme evaluation
Limitations
This is a measurement validation study with university students only, so findings may not apply to younger children or non-student populations. The study does not evaluate whether addressing these gender norms actually improves child well-being or changes behaviour.
Abstract
Background Robust measurement of gender-related beliefs and attitudes is essential for understanding how gender norms operate in higher-education settings. However, little is known about how these constructs are structured among Ghanaian university students or whether widely used instruments retain validity in this context. This study examined the factor structure, reliability, and measurement invariance of adapted versions of the Gender Norm Attitudes Scale (GNAS) and Gender Equitable Men (GEM) Scale among Sociology and Social Work students in Ghana. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 631 students (98.3% response rate) from two public universities, split for Explorative Factor Analysis (EFA) (n = 339) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) (n = 364). EFA used principal axis factoring with oblique rotation on polychoric correlation matrices; parallel analysis guided factor retention. CFA was estimated under maximum likelihood and WLSMV estimators. Reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's omega. Measurement invariance was tested across sex, university, programme, and year level using the standard nested sequence of configural, metric, and scalar models, and was evaluated by changes in fit indices (ΔCFI, ΔRMSEA, ΔTLI, and ΔSRMR); differential item functioning (DIF) was assessed using ordinal logistic regression. Data were managed and described using SPSS Version 32; all factor-analytic, reliability, invariance, and DIF analyses were conducted in R (psych and lavaan packages). Results The GNAS yielded a two-factor, 11-item structure reflecting beliefs supporting men's privileges (α = 0.824, ω = 0.868) and equity for girls and women (α = 0.830, ω = 0.898), with strong fit (CFI = 0.960; TLI = 0.949; RMSEA = 0.057). Polychoric EFA confirmed this, indicating ordinal estimation did not alter the solution. After empirically driven item reduction, the adapted GEM Scale emerged as a modified version of the original instrument, with narrower domain coverage and near-complete loss of the Reproductive Health and Disease Prevention domain; the retained 16-item, four-factor structure covered violence, domestic chores and daily life, sexual relationships, and household authority and obedience, explaining 52.6% of variance with acceptable fit (CFI = 0.888; TLI = 0.865; RMSEA = 0.058), though the Household Authority and Obedience factor rested on only two items and the subscales showing weak Cronbach's alpha values. The students generally rejected inequitable norms, though attitudes toward household authority and domestic roles were more variable. For the GNAS, configural and metric invariance held across sex and university (ΔCFI ≤ 0.005); scalar invariance held across university (ΔCFI = 0.006) and was only partial across sex (ΔCFI = 0.022). For the adapted GEM Scale, metric invariance held across university (ΔCFI = 0.006) but not sex (ΔCFI = 0.016), and scalar invariance was not supported in either grouping. Conclusion Although preliminary, the adapted GNAS shows acceptable structural validity, adequate-to-strong reliability, and metric invariance across sex and university and scalar invariance across university. In contrast, the adapted GEM Scale should be interpreted cautiously as a substantially modified measure with reduced domain coverage and less stable invariance properties, for which scalar invariance is not yet established. Further validation, confirmation of these invariance results using ordinal (WLSMV) estimators, and exploration of 5- or 7-point response formats are needed before either adapted scale is used confidently in broader research or programme evaluation.