Assessment of androgyny in children

Abstract

Androgyny as a sex-role type has been studied extensively in adults but hardly at all in children. In the present study, children in Kindergarten through Grade 2 were administered a sex-role preference test in such a way that masculine and feminine scores could be derived independently. As a test of concurrent validity, the children's masculine and feminine preference scores were correlated with a parent-report measure of sex-typing. Both the child and parent measures showed strong sex differences in the types of stimuli preferred. Significant correlations were found between the parent and child measures for girls, but not for boys. Based on their masculine and feminine scores, children were classified as androgynous, masculine, feminine, or undifferentiated. The "absolute midpoint" method of sex-role classification placed the majority of boys in the masculine category (83%) and the majority of girls in the feminine category (79%); 9% of the boys and 18% of the girls were classified as androgynous. This method of classification yielded results similar to the more commonly used "between-sex" median split procedure, but differed sharply from the "within-sex" median split method, which yielded a more even distribution of children across the four sex-role types. The results were discussed with respect to a number of methodological issues in the measurement of androgyny in children.