A Confirmation of the Drive for Muscularity Scale With Sexual Minority Men

摘要

The Drive for Muscularity Scale (DMS) is the most widely used instrument to assess men's body image concerns and responses to societal pressure to achieve a mesomorphic body shape (i.e., lean and highly muscular). While the DMS has generated substantial evidence for its validity across multiple samples of heterosexual men, its factor structure with sexual minority men is largely unexamined. Responding to calls for researchers to validate body image measures across diverse groups, our study utilized confirmatory factor analysis to examine the factor structure of the DMS with a sample of 202 sexual minority men (73% White/European American, 79% gay) from the United States who were recruited online. Results indicated that the original 2-factor structure of the DMS yielded acceptable fit to the data and all items loaded significantly on their respective factors (p <.001). Construct validity was evidenced by positive correlations with psychological distress. We encourage future researchers to investigate the validity of the DMS with sexual minority men of color.