All scales

Social Dominance Orientation (SDO7)

SDO7
psychologysocial sciencesFree for research use

A 16-item measure of preference for group-based hierarchy and inequality. Distinguishes two subdimensions: Dominance (support for active group-based oppression and hierarchy enhancement) and Anti-Egalitarianism (opposition to equality, conceptualised as hierarchy-maintaining).

Items
16
Response format
8-point Likert scale
Version
1.0
Subscales
2

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Preference for group-based hierarchy was measured with the 16-item SDO7 scale (Ho et al., 2015), yielding SDO-Dominance and SDO-Anti-Egalitarianism subscale scores as well as an overall SDO score (mean of all 16 items after reverse-scoring the eight positively-keyed items). Internal consistency was α = .93 for the total scale.

Reliability & validation

Validation population
US online and student samples (combined N > 10,000) reported in Ho et al. (2015)
Cronbach's α
[object Object]

Subscales

SDO-DominanceSDO-Anti-Egalitarianism

Response anchors

Strongly oppose / Strongly disagree · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · Strongly favour / Strongly agree

Known limitations

Ho et al. (2015) validated the scale on a 7-point response format; both 7-point and 8-point variants are common in the literature — report the format used. The two subscales are highly correlated (r ≈ .70); total SDO is often reported for brevity, with subscales reserved for studies that expect the two facets to diverge.

Original citation

Ho, A. K., Sidanius, J., Kteily, N., Sheehy-Skeffington, J., Pratto, F., Henkel, K. E., Foels, R., Stewart, A. L. (2015). The nature of social dominance orientation: Theorizing and measuring preferences for intergroup inequality using the new SDO7 scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(6), 1003-1028.

https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000033

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Library entry verified January 2024. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.