Sex, Religion and Factor Analytically Derived Attitudes towards Homosexuality

SynopsisUsing the Heterosexual Attitudes Towards Homosexuality scale with 560 tertiary college students, 2 factors were identified: Social-Personal Acceptance and Perceived Normality, thus indicating that attitudes towards homosexuality involve multidimensional rather than unidimensional concepts. The ANOVA analysis indicated that in general, respondents agreed moderately with concepts on both factors. As church attendance increased, the respondents’ attitude on both dimensions of homosexuality became less liberal. Females were found to hold more liberal attitudes than males, again on both factors. A number of possibly applicable theoretical propositions were examined to account for the findings. It is suggested that further studies using multidimensional instruments be conducted with non-student populations as findings would be relevant to the homosexuality debate.