Beliefs About Naturists Scale: A Standardised Measure of Personal Stigma Towards Naturists

The aim of this study was to fill in the gap in the existing literature when it comes to investigating stigma towards naturism and the individuals who engage in it by creating a psychometric instrument that considers both the experiences of naturists and the beliefs of non-naturists. This quantitative study was cross-sectional in its nature. For the first part of the study, a total of 151 participants participated. After data cleaning, the final sample size was 126. The participants were aged between 18 and 69. The participants were asked to report their gender, sexual orientation, and previous engagement in naturist activities. For the second part of the study, 347 participants completed the survey. The participants in this section were aged between 20 and 76 years old. An explorative principal axis factor analysis was conducted on the 34 items of the developed beliefs about naturists scale (BANS). The analysis indicated that the items loaded onto three factors, with a total of 46.686% of the variance explained, which broadly related to the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviour components of stigma. The first validation indicated that the BANS should be reduced to 29 items. The attitudes factor consisted of 13 items; the beliefs factor consisted of 10 items; and the behaviours factor consisted of six items. A further quantitative study was then carried out to re-evaluate the construct validity of the improved scale and to explore its concurrent validity. The revalidation of the BANS aimed to evaluate the concurrent validity, construct validity, and reliability of the scale. The correlation analysis indicated that the BANS has a high concurrent validity, as it was highly correlated with similar theoretical concepts and empirical predictors of stigma. Although more research is necessary to further evaluate the predictive validity, as well as the validity and reliability across different populations, this preliminary validation suggests a good concurrent and convergent validity, making this the most valid scale in existence to date when it comes to exploring the relationship between stigma and naturism.