Adaptation of the Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale in Urdu

• Published in: Sexuality & culture 2024-08, Vol.28 (4), p.1496-1511
• Main Authors: Kazmi, Syed Messum Ali, Farooq, Zaeema, Tariq, Shahrukh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acceptance; Adaptation; Attitudes; College students; Confirmatory factor analysis; Discriminant analysis; Gender; Mythology; Original Article; Personality and Social Psychology; Police reports; Psychology; Rape; Regional and Cultural Studies; Sex crimes; Sex roles; Sexism; Sexual behavior; Social Sciences; University students; Victims of crime; Violence
• ISSN: 1095-5143; 1936-4822
• DOI: 10.1007/s12119-023-10189-6

The Updated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (uIRMA) scale, a self-report inventory, assesses acceptance of rape myths in various contexts, people and situations and is highly useful in clinical and cognitive areas of psychology. We adapted uIRMA in Urdu (uIRMA-U) largely for Pakistanis, using a sample of 178 men and 238 women ( N  = 416), university students in Lahore, Pakistan and verified its structure with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA, factor loadings > 0.30), which confirmed the original four-factor solution of the scale that included: She Asked For It, It Wasn’t Really Rape, She Lied, and He Didn’t Mean To. Reliability of the four factors or subscales were moderately high, and uIRMA-U scale and its subscales had moderate to high convergent validity ( r  = 0.72–0.87) against Hostile Sexism and discriminated ( r  = 0.12–0.19) well against Belief in a Just World scale. We provide some insights about cultural specificity of the uIRMA-U, and implications for research and practice in Pakistan.