Measurement of Valuing Diversity: A Multidimensional Conception and Confirmatory Analysis

This study explored the construct validity of the Attitudes Toward Diversity Scale (ATDS; Montei et al., 1996) in relation to the Scale of Ethnocultural Empathy (SEE; Wang et al., 2003) and the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (M-GUDS; Miville et al., 1999) in a sample of 157 undergraduate and graduate students at Old Dominion University. Because there was no precedent in the literature, a purely theoretical relationship was hypothesized. The relationship between the SEE and the ATDS v as hypothesized to be stronger than between the M-GUDS and the ATDS. A multivariate structural model tested the hypothesized pattern of relationships emanating from the SEE and M-GUDS to the ATDS. The multivariate model was found to be a good fit for the data, although the relationship between the SEE and ATDS was not stronger than between the M-GUDS and ATDS as anticipated. All subscales of the SEE and M-GUDS were found to significantly predict scores on at least one subscale of the ATDS. Implications for the construct validity of the ATDS and the fundamental nature of the valuing diversity construct are discussed. Future research should further explore the valuing diversity construct.