androgyny

• androgyny is the balance between feminine and masuline traits
• BSRI:

  invented by Bem 1974

  high m, low f masucline

  low m, high f feminine

  high m, high f androgynous

  low m, low f undifferentiated

  m: leader aggressive ambitious

  f: affectionate cheerful childlike

  n: adaptable coceited concietious
• -social desirabilty. respondents answer in the int the way that researchers will have a favourable opinion on them. therefore possibly responding to demand characteristics . in case of BSRI men want to be perceived as more masucline if female more feminine so they rate themselves higher on a particular trait. therefore BSRI may be deemed inaccurate due to the inaccurate depicition of respondents gender expression lowering the validity of bems research
• -BSRI is that people may not have insight into their degree of masculinity, femininity or androgyny. Asking people to rate themselves on a questionnaire relies on people having an understanding of their personality and behaviour that they may not necessarily have. Gender is a social construct which may be more open to interpretation than, say, sex. Furthermore, the questionnaire’s scoring system is subjective and people's application of the 7-point scale may differ. This suggests that the BSRI may not be an objective, scientific way of assessing masculinity, femininity or androgyny
• A weakness of using questionnaires to assess a pp’s androgyny is response bias. Respondents are forced to choose from a set of given answers, when they may not necessarily agree with any of the choices they are presented with. This can happen when questions are listed so that respondents may answer, for example, ‘yes’ so many times in a row that it becomes habit and they answer all questions similarly. In the BSRI participants may answer in the middle allocating a 3 to the masculine or feminine trait rather than the extremes of 1 or 7.​
• The BSRI was developed over 40 years ago and behaviours that are regarded as 'typical' and 'acceptable' in relation to gender have changed significantly since then. Bem's scale is made up of stereotypical ideas of masculinity and femininity that may be outdated, In addition, the scale was devised using people all from the United States. Notions of maleness and femaleness in this country may not be shared across all cultures and societies.

  This suggests that the BSRI may lack temporal validity and generalisability, and not be a suitable measure of gender identity today.
• +BSRI is, at the time it was developed, it appeared valid and reliable.The scale was developed by asking 50 m and 50 f judges to rate 200 traits in terms of how much the traits represented 'maleness' and 'femaleness. The traits highest in each category became the 20 masculine and 20 feminine traits on the scale. piloted with over 1000 students and the results broadly corresponded with the participants' own description of their gender identity, demonstrating validity. A follow-up study involving a smaller sample of the same students produced similar scores test-retest reliability.