Outness Inventory (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000)
- Populations: Sexual minority Adolescents; Transgendered sexual minority adolescents
- Age ranges: 14-24
- Languages: English
- Countries: United States
Items
Subscales
This measure has multiple proposed factor structures.
Original Structure (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000)
- Out to Family
- Out to the World
- Out to Religion
Adapted Structure (Zhenqiang, 2022)
- Outness, 3 Items
- Oppenness, 3 Items
Additional Adatped Structure (DeLong, Kim, & Kiperman, 2024)
- Out To Family, 4 Items
- Out To World, 3 Items
Adapted Items by Subscale
Outness
Item stem: “Have you revealed your sexual orientation to...”
- Friends in school
- Classmates / School peers
- School Adults
Openness
Item stem: “How openly do you talk about your sexual identity with...”
- Friends in school
- Classmates / School peers
- School Adults
Additional Adatped Structure (DeLong, Kim, & Kiperman, 2024)
- Out To Family, 4 Items
- Out To World, 3 Items
Responses
This scale also has multiple proposed response formats:
Original Scale (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000)
7 point scale
- 1= does not know
- 2 = person might know about your sexual orientation status but it is never talked about
- 3 = person probably knows about your sexual orientation status but it is never talked about
- 4 = person probably knows about your sexual orientation status, but it is rarely talked about
- 5 = person definitely knows about your sexual orientation status, but it is rarely talked about
- 6 = person definitely knows about your sexual orientation status, and it is sometimes talked about
- 7 = definitely knows and openly talked about.
Adapted Scale (Zhenqiang, 2022)
5 Point scales
- Outness Items ranged “1 = no one” to “5 = all of them”
- Openness Items ranged “1 = no one” to “5 = all of them”
Scoring
“The results of the OI provide three domains of outness: (1) family, (2) religion, and (3) world. The average of the three domains creates an overall outness score.” (DeLong, Kim, & Kiperman, 2024)
Citations
- Mohr, J., & Fassinger, R. (2000). Measuring dimensions of lesbian and gay male experience. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 33(2), 66-90. doi:10.1080/07481756.2000.12068999
- Zhao, Zhenqiang. (2022). The Process of Sexual Orientation Disclosure and Concealment: Implications for a Multi-Dimensional Construct among Sexual Diverse Youth (Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA).
- DeLong, G., Kim, D., & Kiperman, S. (2024). On outness: Validity evidence of the outness inventory for sexual and gender minoritized adolescents. Youth & Society, 56(6), 1033-1047. https://doi.org/10.1177/0044118X231216750
Team comments
Adequacy ratings for this scale are based on (Zhenqiang, 2022), as Mohr and Fassinger validated this measure in an adult population. Please see (Mohr & Fassinger, 2000) for further validation data, which included evidence for Face validity, Construct Validity, Internal Consistency, and Convergent Validity, but only in adults aged 18-69
Scoring breakdown
Measure development
- Significant design input from young people
- Cognitive interviews with young people
- Expert input
Validity
- Unknown: Face validity
- Green: Convergent validity
- Green: Construct validity
Reliability
- Green: Internal consistency
- Unknown: Test-retest
Ease of use
- Unknown: Readability
Definitions
Face validity: How well a measure appears to represent the construct it is supposed to be measuring.
Convergent validity: How well a measure correlates with other hypothetically-related measures.
Construct validity: The extent to which a measure reflects the construct it was designed to evaluate.
Internal consistency: The extent to which items in a scale capture aspects of the same construct.
Test-retest: The degree to which measurement scores are consistent over a short period of time (usually 2 weeks).
Readability: The ease with which a reader can understand the questionnaire items.
Key
- Green: Meets validation criteria
- Red: Does not meet validation criteria
- Unknown: Evidence not available
