78% of Psychology's Masculinity Scales Measure Only the Negative

Relational and cultural blind spots compound the picture:

• 43 percent of scales had low relational focus, giving statements with no specified social context; only 35 percent showed high relational focus.
• 58 percent ignored cultural norms entirely, implicitly treating Western manhood as universal; only 15 percent showed high cultural attunement.
• 66 percent were validated on homogeneous samples. Among the 12 most-cited scales, none accounted for cultural norms and only one used a diverse sample.
• Statistically, 59 percent of quantitative scales showed high reliability and 77 percent moderate-or-high internal validity — but only 9 percent offered strong evidence of external validity, meaning the results generalize beyond the original test group.

"The most important takeaway is that most of those tools were designed to identify negative aspects or the problems associated with masculinity," Dr. Christian Blötner and Sören Michallek, M.Sc., of FernUniversität in Hagen, who were not involved in the study, told PsyPost. "There is a dearth of assessment tools, however, that emphasize the potential strengths concomitant with masculinity."

Has measurement improved over five decades?

Partly. Comparing the 1970s through the 2020s, average external validity ratings rose from 1.00 to 2.50 out of 3, and cultural attunement rose from 1.00 to 2.25 — though one statistical test for cultural attunement missed significance, and the 2020s category covers only 2020 and 2021. Differences in deficit-versus-strengths focus, relational focus, and sample diversity across decades were not statistically significant. Notably, scales published before 2000 make up less than a third of the sample but account for nearly 77 percent of all citations, meaning older, narrower tools still dominate actual use.

What are the caveats?

Several. The Movember Foundation, a men's health charity, funded the work, and four of the eight authors are Movember employees. The 10-citation threshold excluded scales built for specific minority groups, non-English scholarship, and new strengths-based measures that have not yet accumulated citations — a rule that could make the field look more deficit-focused than current practice. Coders also initially disagreed on the central deficit-versus-strengths category, which the authors say may reflect genuine ambiguity in the concept itself.

"The way researchers ask questions arguably influences the answers they receive," Blötner and Michallek explained. "If a questionnaire only asks about harmful attitudes and behaviors, it will mainly reveal harmful attitudes and behaviors." They warn that vague prompts can misfire: a man scoring high because he merely recognizes a stereotype "could be falsely identified as in need of professional health counseling."

The authors call for new measures developed with diverse communities, survey instructions that specify social context, and empirical tests of how different framings of masculinity affect men's willingness to engage with health programs. As Blötner and Michallek put it: "Focusing only on the problems within a research area is like rating the quality of a restaurant only by means of its poor parking opportunities."

The study is titled "What Is the Measure of a Man? A Systematic Scoping Review of 50 Years of Masculinities Scales."