This study was designed to inquire into the effects of aging versus age cohort by examining how men and women representing four age cohorts across the life span endorse masculinity ideology. Ascertaining whether different groups (such as age cohorts) understand a scale in the same way by assessing measurement invariance is a fundamental but oft-ignored prerequisite to comparing their scores on the scale. The Male Role Norms Inventory-Short Form (MRNI-SF) is a multidimensional measure used to assess beliefs in specific norms of masculinity, as well as general beliefs in traditional masculinity ideology (TMI). A five-item unidimensional MRNI -Very Brief (MRNI-VB) has also been developed measuring TMI only. This study administered the MRNI-SF (which includes the five items for the MRNI-VB) to 1,352 men and women in four age cohorts: young, established, middle-aged, and older. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses found support for partial strong invariance for the MRNI-SF across age cohorts. Support for partial strict invariance was found for the MRNI-VB across age cohorts. For both scales, the effect sizes of non-invariant parameters were small in magnitude, thus non-invariance may have little practical significance. These results suggest that the MRNI-SF and the MRNI-VB measure similar masculinity ideology constructs across men and women in four age cohorts. Mean scores on each instrument were therefore compared across age cohorts with confidence, finding that the age cohorts commonly did not endorse “traditional” masculinity ideology, but differed in the level of disagreement with the tenets of TMI in six out of nine comparisons. In five of those six, older adults hewed more strongly to TMI than younger adults, suggesting that age cohort was more determinative of masculinity beliefs than age.

本研究旨在通过研究代表整个生命周期中四个年龄段的男性和女性如何认可男性气概意识形态来探讨衰老对年龄段的影响。通过评估测量不变性来确定不同的群体（例如年龄组）是否以相同的方式理解量表是比较他们在量表上的分数的基本但经常被忽略的前提。男性角色规范库存简短表（MRNI-SF）是一种多维度量，用于评估对特定男性气概规范的信念以及对传统男性气概意识形态（TMI）的普遍信念。还开发了仅测量TMI的五项一维MRNI-非常简要（MRNI-VB）。这项研究对四个年龄段的1352名男女进行了MRNI-SF（包括MRNI-VB的五个项目）管理 成熟，中年和年长的人。多组验证性因素分析发现，跨年龄队列的MRNI-SF部分强烈不变。跨年龄组的MRNI-VB支持部分严格不变性。对于这两个尺度，非不变参数的影响大小都较小，因此，不变可能没有什么实际意义。这些结果表明，在四个年龄段的男性和女性中，MRNI-SF和MRNI-VB测量了相似的男性气概意识形态建构。因此，对每个年龄组的平均得分进行了信心比较，发现年龄组通常不认可“传统”男性气概的意识形态，但是在9个比较中有6个在对TMI宗旨的不同意见上存在差异。在这六个中的五个中，