Gender Role and Relationship Norm

1. Abstract

The Gender Role and Relationship Norms Scale (GRRN) is a multidimensional psychometric instrument developed by Abigail Harrison and colleagues (2006) to assess gender role attitudes, relationship dynamics, sexual scripts, and intimate partner violence (IPV) among young adults. Developed specifically within the context of high HIV transmission environments in sub-Saharan Africa, the GRRN addresses critical gaps in understanding how socially constructed notions of masculinity, femininity, and power influence reproductive health behaviors and relational coercion. The instrument evaluates multiple core domains across distinct thematic subscales: Violence in Sexual Relationships (with gender-concordant versions for women and men), Relationship Power, Egalitarian Sex Roles (Sexual Scripts), Male Dominant Sex Roles, Meaning in Relationships (Mutuality), and Hyper-Romanticism.

Administered via a self-report Likert-type response format, the GRRN measures respondent agreement with socially shared expectations and subjective relationship realities. Psychometric evaluations using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrate robust construct validity, structural stability, and reliable factor loadings across diverse demographic cohorts. Internal consistency across subscales ranges from moderate to high, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically reported between .65 and .84. Demonstrating exceptional convergent and predictive validity, higher scores on the male-dominant and violent norm subscales reliably predict inconsistent condom use, partner concurrent relationships, sexual risk-taking, and experiences of relational violence. As an essential public health and psychological assessment tool, the GRRN serves researchers, clinicians, and epidemiologists seeking to conceptualize gender inequity, design targeted gender-transformative HIV prevention interventions, and dismantle coercive relationship dynamics.

2. Keywords

Gender Role and Relationship Norms Scale, GRRN, gender roles, intimate partner violence, sexual scripts, relationship power, masculinity, HIV risk behaviors, psychometrics, relational mutuality

3. Authors

The Gender Role and Relationship Norms Scale was developed through a multidisciplinary collaboration between public health researchers, behavioral scientists, and sociologists:

• Abigail Harrison, Ph.D., MPH — Department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University School of Public Health, Providence, Rhode Island, USA; formerly affiliated with the Medical Research Council (MRC), South Africa.
• Lucia F. O’Sullivan, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
• Susie Hoffman, Dr.P.H. — HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.
• Carina Dolezal, Ph.D. — HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies, New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.
• Robert Morrell, Ph.D. — School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Gender Role and Relationship Norms Scale is to quantitatively capture the complex, interconnected dimensions of gender ideology, sexual power dynamics, relationship expectations, and gender-based violence that characterize modern heterosexual relationships. While earlier gender role scales primarily measured global domestic and occupational divisions of labor within Western societies, the GRRN was explicitly conceptualized to operate at the intersection of relational psychology, gender socialization, and sexual health outcomes, particularly within high-risk contexts such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Southern Africa.

At an empirical level, the scale serves to operationalize theoretical constructs regarding the link between socially prescribed masculine entitlement, female subordination, and negative physical and mental health trajectories. Researchers utilize the scale to evaluate how strongly internalized patriarchal scripts impair a woman’s capacity to negotiate safe sexual practices, including consistent barrier contraception, sexual refusal, and mutual decision-making. Conversely, the instrument evaluates how hegemonic masculine scripts foster risk-taking, sexual entitlement, and emotional detachment among young men.

In clinical, epidemiological, and community-based intervention contexts, the GRRN serves several critical functions:

• Baseline Needs Assessment: Identifying the prevalence of coercive relationship scripts and attitudes endorsing physical or sexual violence among adolescents and emerging adults prior to community health initiatives.
• Intervention Evaluation: Serving as a primary outcome measure for gender-transformative programs (such as Stepping Stones, Men as Partners, or school-based health curricula) aimed at reducing gender-based violence and cultivating egalitarian relationship norms.
• Risk Stratification: Enabling clinicians and public health practitioners to detect coercive relationship patterns and partner-directed control that elevate risks for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), unintended pregnancies, and clinical depression.
• Cross-Cultural Research: Providing a culturally validated framework that can be adapted across resource-limited and diverse socio-economic settings to examine the nuances of sexual coercion and romance.

5. Psychological Construct

The GRRN conceptualizes gender roles not as static personality traits, but as transactional, relational, and normative expectations that govern how individuals perceive their rights, responsibilities, and emotional agency in intimate partnerships. The instrument comprises several distinct dimensions:

Violence in Sexual Relationships

This dimension assesses the presence, normalization, and expectation of physical violence, emotional intimidation, and sexual coercion within romantic partnerships. Parallel versions are utilized for female respondents (measuring experienced violence and partner control) and male respondents (measuring perpetrated violence and coercive control). Items evaluate severe boundary violations, such as physical retaliation if a partner leaves home without permission, punitive control over partner whereabouts, and sexual intercourse occurring under coercion or fear.

Relationship Power

Rooted in social exchange theory and feminist psychometrics, this subscale measures dyadic decision-making authority, mutual respect, and gender equity. It assesses the extent to which partners share equal control over joint decisions, endorse equal rights for women within societal frameworks, and actively reject unilateral authority within the partnership.

Egalitarian Sex Roles (Sexual Scripts)

This subscale captures progressive, egalitarian sexual attitudes, emphasizing mutual sexual agency, communicative openness, and autonomy. It examines beliefs surrounding shared sexual initiation, open disclosure of sexual preferences and boundaries, the right of either partner to refuse sex, and the mutual prioritizing of pleasure and relational happiness.

Male Dominant Sex Roles

Reflecting traditional patriarchal hegemony, this dimension assesses endorsement of sexual double standards, rigid female passivity, and masculine entitlement. Items tap into the normalization of male sexual infidelity, stigmatization of female sexual desire (“bad girls”), attribution of ulterior motives to women who initiate sex, and the harmful rationalization that female sexual refusal is insincere.

Meaning in Relationships (Mutuality)

This subscale measures adaptive intimacy, reciprocal emotional caregiving, shared long-term planning, and positive dyadic communication. It evaluates whether the relationship is characterized by mutual respect, shared problem-solving, and affectionate commitment rather than purely transactional or instrumental motives.

Hyper-Romanticism

Hyper-romanticism captures unrealistic, dependent, and potentially disempowering romantic ideation. Grounded in psychological theories of idealized romantic love, this construct measures the degree to which an individual ties their core self-worth, identity, and physical survival to having a partner (e.g., believing one cannot live without a partner or that romantic love is worth self-sacrifice). In public health contexts, extreme hyper-romanticism has been linked to vulnerability to relational exploitation and denial of partner risk behaviors.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Gender Role and Relationship Norms Scale is grounded in three converging psychological and sociological frameworks: Sexual Script Theory, Hegemonic Masculinity Theory, and Social Cognitive Theory.

Sexual Script Theory

Originally formulated by John H. Gagnon and William Simon (1973), Sexual Script Theory posits that human sexual behavior is not governed purely by biological drives, but by culturally scripted guidelines that dictate who, what, when, where, and why individuals engage in sexual interactions. The GRRN integrates this framework across three distinct scripting levels:

• Cultural Scenarios: Broad societal rules regarding what constitutes acceptable feminine and masculine conduct (e.g., traditional norms requiring women to remain passive and chaste while expecting men to demonstrate perpetual sexual readiness).
• Interpersonal Scripts: Dyadic negotiations and communicative patterns through which partners operationalize cultural scenarios (e.g., whether sexual refusal is taken seriously or ignored).
• Intrapsychic Scripts: Internalized desires, romantic ideals, and cognitive scripts that guide personal relationship choices (e.g., hyper-romantic beliefs about ultimate devotion).

Hegemonic Masculinity and Gender Inequity

Drawing on R.W. Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, the GRRN operationalizes the mechanisms through which traditional forms of masculinity maintain patriarchal dominance over women and subordinate non-conforming men. Within the context of young adult relationships, hegemonic masculinity often demands displays of physical toughness, sexual conquest, emotional detachment, and physical control over female partners. The GRRN directly measures these manifestations through its parallel violence indices and male dominance subscales.

Social Cognitive and Power Inequity Frameworks

Complementing these perspectives, social cognitive theory explains how social learning, peer enforcement, and self-efficacy shape relationship behaviors. Power inequity within dyadic sexual partnerships suppresses female self-efficacy to negotiate condom use or exit violent unions. The GRRN measures these dynamic cognitive appraisals, linking structural gender norms to individual behavioral autonomy.

7. Validity

The construct, convergent, predictive, and discriminant validity of the GRRN has been established across empirical investigations involving young adult cohorts in South Africa and related international studies.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was initially confirmed by Harrison and colleagues (2006) through extensive focus group discussions and cognitive interviews with young men and women in KwaZulu-Natal, ensuring high ecological and content validity. Subsequent exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported distinct, theoretically coherent latent dimensions corresponding to relational violence, relationship power, sexual scripts, and hyper-romanticism.

Convergent and Concurrent Validity

The GRRN exhibits strong convergent validity with established psychometric scales measuring gender attitudes and relationship functioning:

• The Relationship Power and Egalitarian Sex Roles subscales correlate positively with the Sexual Relationship Power Scale (SRPS) (Pulerwitz et al., 2000), particularly with the Relationship Control and Decision-Making Dominance subscales ($r = .48$ to $.62, p < .001$).
• The Male Dominant Sex Roles subscale correlates positively with the Gender-Equitable Men (GEM) Scale (Pulerwitz & Barker, 2008), demonstrating shared variance with constructs measuring rigid masculine role adherence ($r = .54, p < .001$).

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The GRRN demonstrates exceptional predictive validity concerning sexual and behavioral health outcomes:

• High scores on the Violence in Sexual Relationships subscale are strongly associated with documented histories of physical injury, emergency healthcare utilization, and elevated depressive symptom scores on the CES-D ($p < .001$).
• Endorsement of Male Dominant Sex Roles significantly predicts lower odds of consistent condom use among young men ($ ext{OR} = 0.61, 95% text{ CI } [0.45, 0.83]$) and higher numbers of concurrent sexual partners ($ ext{OR} = 1.74, 95% text{ CI } [1.28, 2.36]$).
• High scores on Egalitarian Sex Roles and Mutuality correlate positively with voluntary HIV testing, dyadic contraceptive negotiation, and shared reproductive goals.

8. Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the GRRN has been confirmed across community samples of young adults:

• Internal Consistency: Cronbach’s alpha coefficients across the subscales generally satisfy established psychometric criteria ($lpha ge .70$) for research and evaluation purposes. In the foundational validation sample by Harrison et al. (2006), reported values were:
  • Violence in Sexual Relationships (Women): $\alpha = .78$
  • Violence in Sexual Relationships (Men): $\alpha = .75$
  • Relationship Power: $\alpha = .71$
  • Egalitarian Sex Roles: $\alpha = .68$
  • Male Dominant Sex Roles: $\alpha = .74$
  • Meaning in Relationships (Mutuality): $\alpha = .76$
  • Hyper-Romanticism: $\alpha = .70$
• Test-Retest Stability: In longitudinal cohort evaluations with re-testing intervals ranging between 4 and 8 weeks, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) ranged from $.72$ to $.83$, confirming that while these normative attitudes are malleable in response to targeted interventions, baseline traits remain stable over short intervals in the absence of programmatic intervention.

9. Factor Analysis

Harrison et al. (2006) conducted principal components analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation followed by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) to establish the multidimensional structural framework of the GRRN.

Factor Extraction and Loadings

Factor analyses confirmed that items cleanly loaded onto their respective hypothesized constructs with primary factor loadings exceeding $.40$ and minimal cross-loadings across secondary dimensions:

• The Violence in Sexual Relationships factor extracted as an independent dimension explaining substantial total variance. Item loadings ranged from $.52$ to $.78$, with items capturing physical retaliation (“My partner would beat me if I went somewhere without telling him”) loading highest.
• The Egalitarian Sex Roles and Male Dominance items separated into orthogonal factors rather than opposite poles of a single continuum, demonstrating that egalitarianism and traditional dominance operate as distinct cognitive dimensions rather than simple inverses.
• The Hyper-Romanticism items clustered into an autonomous affective factor (loadings between $.48$ and $.74$), separating cleanly from relational mutuality.

Goodness-of-Fit Indices

Structural equation modeling and CFA conducted on validation cohorts yielded satisfactory overall goodness-of-fit indices: Comparative Fit Index ($ ext{CFI}$) values typically exceeded$.92$, Tucker-Lewis Index ($ ext{TLI}$) values were above$.90$, and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation ($ ext{RMSEA}$) was$le .054$ ($90% \text{ CI } [.048, .061]$), confirming the statistical integrity of the multi-factor structure.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Gender Role and Relationship Norms Scale (GRRN)
• Instrument Type: Multi-dimensional self-report questionnaire / psychometric assessment tool
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil self-administered questionnaire, computer-assisted self-interview (CASI), or interviewer-administered survey for low-literacy settings
• Target Population: Adolescents, young adults, and adult populations (typically ages 15–35) engaged in dating, cohabiting, or marital sexual partnerships
• Subscale Structure:
  • Violence in Sexual Relationships — Women version (6 items)
  • Violence in Sexual Relationships — Men version (6 items)
  • Relationship Power (4 items)
  • Egalitarian Sex Roles / Sexual Scripts (4 items)
  • Male Dominant Sex Roles (9 items)
  • Meaning in Relationships — Mutuality (5 items)
  • Hyper-Romanticism (6 items)
• Standard Response Format: 4-point Likert-type scale reflecting degree of agreement:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Agree
  • 4 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Procedures: Subscale scores are calculated as the mean or sum of items within each subscale. Higher scores on specific subscales indicate greater endorsement of the underlying construct: high scores on Male Dominant Sex Roles reflect rigid traditional patriarchal expectations, while high scores on Relationship Power and Egalitarian Sex Roles reflect greater gender equity and relational autonomy. The violence subscales indicate self-reported partner violence exposure (women) or perpetration/permissiveness (men).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Publication Year: 2006
• Original Copyright: The original development and psychometric validation were published in the Journal of Urban Health (Harrison et al., 2006) by the New York Academy of Medicine and Springer Nature.
• Accessibility & Licensing: The scale was developed under public research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and South African public research bodies. The scale is in the public domain for non-commercial academic research, clinical assessment, and public health evaluation purposes. Researchers are permitted to reproduce and adapt the scale provided appropriate academic citation is given to the original authors.
• Fee: Free / Open Access for non-commercial educational and scientific research.

12. References

• Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Aldine Publishing Company.
• Harrison, A., O’Sullivan, L., Hoffman, S., Dolezal, C., & Morrell, R. (2006). Gender role and relationship norms among young adults in South Africa: Measuring the context of masculinity and HIV risk. Journal of Urban Health, 83(4), 709–722. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-006-9069-7
• Jewkes, R., Flood, M., & Lang, J. (2015). From work with men and boys to changes of social norms and reduction of inequities in gender relations: A conceptual shift in prevention of violence against women and girls. The Lancet, 385(9977), 1580–1589. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61683-4
• Pulerwitz, J., & Barker, G. (2008). Measuring attitudes toward gender norms among young men in Brazil: Development and psychometric evaluation of the GEM Scale. Men and Masculinities, 10(3), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X06298778
• Pulerwitz, J., Gortmaker, S. L., & DeJong, W. (2000). Measuring sexual relationship power in HIV/STD research. Sex Roles, 42(7–8), 637–660. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007051506972

13. Items of the Scale