Contribution to the Italian translation and adaptation of the Lesbian Internalized Homophobia Scale of Szymanski and Chung

SUMMARY. Introduction: The article describes the translation and adaptation process of the Lesbian Internalized Homophobia Scale (LHIS) by Szymanski & Chung (2001), which was carried out on a sample of 405 Italian lesbians coming from different parts of Italy. Methods and Results: Parallel analysis confirmed five factors, while the Exploratory Factor Analysis (PAF method) confirmed only two of the original scales: Connection with the Lesbian Community, (CLC) and Personal Feelings about being a Lesbian (PFL). A third scale received only partial confirmation (Attitudes toward Other Lesbians, ATOL), whereas two new scales (Positive Affirmation and Refusal of One’s Sexual Orientation) emerged as a mixture of items which were originally designed to measure other scales. Inter-correlations among the five new scales are also presented: they are not as high as those of the American sample. The five scales all load on one second-order factor. Conclusions: Owing to the redundancy of the scales, a general remark about discriminating validity is offered, especially when the length of the questionnaire is taken into consideration. A shortened, onedimensional version of the scale (12 items) is also presented, which yielded a high omogeneity (Cronbach’s alpha = .81).