Further factor-analytic investigation of the Thorne femininity study

Abstract

The responses of 512 undergraduate women to 198 items of the Thorne Femininity Study were factor analyzed in order to isolate the dimensions of femininity represented among the items of this instrument. The procedure used isolated 11 orthogonal factors that accounted for 21.1% of the total variance. Three additional samples of women were tested (total N=222) and compared to the college age samples on the 11 factors. The various samples differed in many systematic and statistically significant ways. Suggestions were made as to the possibility of developing new items to measure some aspects of femininity not represented completely among the items analyzed.