Homophily Scales (Old version)

Abstract

The Homophily Scales (Old version), developed by James C. McCroskey, Virginia P. Richmond, and John A. Daly in 1974 and formally published in 1975, represent foundational psychometric instruments designed to operationalize and quantify perceived interpersonal similarity within communication studies and social psychology. Rooted in early sociological formulations of homophily as the tendency of individuals to associate and bond with similar others, McCroskey and colleagues developed a standardized self-report metric using a 7-point semantic differential format. While their exploratory 46-item research pool mapped four candidate dimensions—Attitude, Background, Value, and Appearance—subsequent factor-analytic investigations established two exceptionally stable, parsimonious subscales that form the core standardized instrument: the Attitude Homophily Scale (4 items) and the Background Homophily Scale (4 items).

Each subscale yields a composite score ranging from 4 to 28, where higher scores reflect higher degrees of perceived alignment between the respondent and a target communicator. Extensive psychometric evaluations across instructional, organizational, mass media, and interpersonal contexts have demonstrated sound internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients regularly exceeding .85 for Attitude Homophily and .75 to .85 for Background Homophily. Construct, convergent, and predictive validities are substantiated by strong theoretical and empirical correlations with source credibility (ethos), interpersonal attraction, cognitive learning, affective orientation, and communication satisfaction. This comprehensive article provides an in-depth academic exposition of the Homophily Scales (Old version), encompassing historical context, theoretical frameworks, psychometric properties, factor structures, administration and scoring protocols, and complete instrument items.

Keywords

Homophily, Perceived Homophily, Attitude Homophily, Background Homophily, Interpersonal Attraction, Semantic Differential, James C. McCroskey, Source Credibility, Social Similarity, Instructional Communication

Authors

The Homophily Scales (Old version) were conceptualized and validated by three prominent scholars in communication theory and psychometrics:

• James C. McCroskey, Ed.D. (1938–2012): Widely regarded as one of the most prolific scholars in the communication discipline, McCroskey served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and later at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He pioneered measurement methodologies across communication apprehension, source credibility, nonverbal immediacy, and interpersonal perception.
• Virginia P. Richmond, Ph.D.: Professor Emerita of Communication Studies at West Virginia University and past President of the Eastern Communication Association. Dr. Richmond has authored dozens of seminal books and empirical articles focusing on instructional communication, organizational communication dynamics, teacher immediacy, power in communication, and interpersonal attraction.
• John A. Daly, Ph.D.: The Liddell Centennial Professor of Communication, Regents Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Professor of Management at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Daly is an internationally recognized expert in organizational behavior, interpersonal communication, and interpersonal influence.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Homophily Scales (Old version) is to provide empirical researchers with a standardized, reliable, and construct-valid metric for capturing an individual’s subjective perception of similarity to a designated target person. In interpersonal communication, persuasion, mass media effects, and pedagogy, communicators do not respond solely to the objective demographic or ideological characteristics of a source; rather, human behavior, message processing, and relational trajectories are profoundly mediated by perceptions of similarity.

Historically, research examining social similarity suffered from severe operational heterogeneity. Investigators frequently utilized ad-hoc single-item indicators, demographic matching proxies (such as matching race, age, or income bracket from census categories), or idiosyncratic questionnaires lacking rigorous psychometric validation. McCroskey, Richmond, and Daly (1974, 1975) addressed this methodological gap by constructing a clean, multi-item semantic differential scale grounded in systematic psychometric factor analysis. The scale assesses two primary facets:

• Attitude Homophily: Quantifies the extent to which the respondent perceives that the target person shares their cognitive beliefs, modes of thinking, general behaviors, and worldview.
• Background Homophily: Quantifies the extent to which the respondent perceives that the target shares their social class, economic status, cultural milieu, and historical life experiences.

In research applications, the instrument serves as an indispensable tool for examining communication phenomena across several key domains:

• Instructional Communication: Investigating how student perceptions of teacher-student homophily enhance affective learning, student motivation, classroom participation, and compliance with academic requests (Rocca & McCroskey, 1999).
• Persuasion and Social Influence: Determining how perceived ideological and status similarity enhances source credibility, message receptivity, opinion change, and compliance with health or political campaigns.
• Organizational Communication: Exploring superior-subordinate dyads, leader-member exchange (LMX) quality, mentoring relationships, and workplace conflict resolution.
• Mass and Digital Media: Measuring audience identification with media personas, digital influencers, avatars, and interactive agents in computer-mediated communication environments.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by this measurement tool is perceived homophily. Derived etymologically from the ancient Greek words homoios (similar) and philia (affection or friendship), homophily designates the fundamental principle that contact and mutual attraction occur at a significantly higher rate between people who are similar than between people who are dissimilar. Within social psychology and communication theory, it is crucial to differentiate between two operationalizations of homophily:

Objective vs. Perceived Homophily

Objective homophily refers to verifiable, demographic, or nominal correspondence between two actors (such as identical chronological age, identical educational attainment, shared institutional affiliation, or matching geographical provenance). Conversely, perceived homophily represents a psychological latent construct: it is an internal cognitive appraisal formed by a percipient regarding the degree of alignment between their own internal state/identity and that of another actor. Decades of cognitive consistency research confirm that subjective perceptions exert far greater predictive power over human communication behavior, relational affinity, and attitude change than distal, objective demographic realities.

Dimensions of the Construct

McCroskey, Richmond, and Daly’s psychometric investigations revealed that perceived homophily is not a monolithic, unidimensional construct, but rather a multidimensional cognitive orientation composed of several discrete perceptual facets:

• Attitude Homophily: This dimension measures cognitive, ideological, and behavioral convergence. It assesses whether the respondent judges the target individual as thinking like them, behaving similarly, sharing core orientations, and exhibiting an overall psychological resemblance (“is like me”). When attitude homophily is high, communication operates under conditions of cognitive resonance, reducing psychological reactance and defensive counter-arguing.
• Background Homophily: This dimension reflects sociological and cultural kinship. It captures perceptions of parity in socioeconomic standing, social class origin, cultural upbringing, and economic circumstances. Background homophily establishes perceived shared lived experiences, reassuring the respondent that the target understands the practical, historical, and material realities of their social existence.
• Value and Appearance Homophily (Exploratory Facets): In the comprehensive 46-item research instrument pool generated by McCroskey et al. (1974), items measuring moral/value congruity and physical appearance resemblance were also evaluated. While these dimensions emerged in specific exploratory factor analyses, empirical instability across varied experimental targets led researchers to isolate Attitude and Background homophily as the robust, cross-contextual core scales.

Theoretical Framework

The Homophily Scales (Old version) are conceptually anchored in several major sociological and social psychological paradigms developed throughout the mid-to-late twentieth century.

Sociological Foundations: Lazarsfeld, Merton, and Rogers

The theoretical nomenclature of homophily was systematically formulated by sociologists Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton (1954) in their classic friendship formation studies in Hilltown and Craftown. Lazarsfeld and Merton made a landmark distinction between status homophily (similarity based on ascribed and acquired social positions such as race, socioeconomic status, and age) and value homophily (similarity based on values, attitudes, and cognitive orientations).

Building on this foundation, Everett M. Rogers and Dilip K. Bhowmik (1970) integrated homophily into diffusion of innovations and communication theory. Rogers and Bhowmik postulated that more effective communication occurs when two individuals are homophilous. When source and receiver share identical meanings, common language codes, and congruent background experiences, communication is accompanied by greater message comprehension, enhanced empathy, higher communication satisfaction, and reduced transmission error. Conversely, heterophily (perceived dissimilarity) engenders cognitive friction, communicative apprehension, and frequent misinterpretation.

Social Psychological Foundations: The Attraction Paradigm

The psychological underpinning of the scale draws heavily upon Donn Byrne’s (1971) Similarity-Attraction Paradigm. Byrne demonstrated through rigorous experimental manipulation that interpersonal attraction is a linear positive function of the proportion of shared attitudes between two individuals. Byrne explained this phenomenon via classical conditioning and reinforcement theory: when another person expresses attitudes concordant with our own, they provide social validation for our construction of reality, functioning as a potent positive reinforcer.

This dynamic is further explained by Fritz Heider’s Balance Theory (1958) and Leon Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory (1954). Balance Theory posits that human cognitive systems strive for structural equilibrium; perceiving an attitudinally similar other promotes balanced triadic states (Person-Other-Object). Under Social Comparison Theory, individuals possess an intrinsic drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities; similar others serve as the most diagnostic and comforting reference targets for validating one’s personal worldview.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Homophily Scales (Old version) has been corroborated across numerous empirical investigations spanning more than four decades.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was established during initial development by McCroskey, Richmond, and Daly (1974, 1975) through systematic multitrait testing across divergent target stimuli. Participants completed the semantic differential battery while evaluating widely divergent relational targets, including close friends, casual acquaintances, disliked peers, public political figures, and formal organizational superiors. Across all target categories, items mapped consistently into distinct dimensions of perceived attitude and background similarity, confirming that the scale accurately captures the underlying psychological construct rather than situational artifacts.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity has been repeatedly documented through strong positive correlations with theoretically related constructs:

• Interpersonal Attraction: Attitude homophily correlates strongly with social attraction and task attraction as measured by McCroskey and McCain’s (1974) Interpersonal Attraction Scale, with Pearson correlations typically falling between r = .50 and r = .72.
• Nonverbal Immediacy: In instructional settings, Rocca and McCroskey (1999) demonstrated that student perceptions of teacher attitude homophily correlate significantly with perceived teacher immediacy (r = .45 to .58).
• Source Credibility: Discriminant validity analyses indicate that while perceived homophily correlates moderately with source credibility dimensions—specifically character/trustworthiness (r ≈ .40) and perceived caring/goodwill (r ≈ .48)—it remains empirically distinct from competence/expertness (often exhibiting low or even non-significant correlations, r = .10 to .25). This confirms that evaluating another person as “like me” is psychometrically separate from evaluating them as professionally competent or technically authoritative.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale possesses demonstrated predictive utility across diverse applied communication paradigms:

• Cognitive and Affective Learning: Student ratings of attitude homophily reliably predict positive student affect toward the instructor, course content, and behavioral intentions to enroll in advanced related coursework (Richmond, 1990; Rocca & McCroskey, 1999).
• Compliance-Gaining: Persuasion experiments reveal that message receivers who rate a communicator higher on attitude homophily display significantly lower counter-argumentation and greater compliance with advocated positions.
• Relational Communication Satisfaction: Dyadic studies confirm that marital partners, workplace colleagues, and roommate dyads exhibiting higher mutual homophily scores report significantly higher relational durability and lower communication apprehension.

Reliability

Internal consistency and measurement stability represent major strengths of the Homophily Scales (Old version). Across numerous empirical investigations, the Attitude and Background subscales have displayed consistent reliability coefficients meeting or exceeding standard psychometric thresholds (Nunnally, 1978).

Internal Consistency Reliability

In the foundational validation studies by McCroskey, Richmond, and Daly (1975), the 4-item Attitude Homophily Scale demonstrated high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from .86 to .93 across independent sample cohorts. The 4-item Background Homophily Scale yielded alpha coefficients typically ranging between .78 and .86.

Subsequent empirical replications across diverse communication settings have consistently supported these initial findings:

• Rocca & McCroskey (1999): In an investigation evaluating university students (N = 258) rating course instructors, the Attitude Homophily subscale achieved an alpha coefficient of .88, while the Background Homophily subscale achieved an alpha of .81.
• McCroskey, McCroskey, & Richmond (2006): In an extensive structural reinvestigation involving large cross-sectional student samples (N > 800), internal consistency estimates remained robust, with Attitude Homophily registering an alpha of .91 and Background Homophily registering an alpha of .82.

Test-Retest Stability

When evaluated over short-term test-retest intervals (two to three weeks) without intervening relational interactions, stability coefficients have regularly surpassed r = .80, indicating that while perceived homophily remains sensitive to longitudinal communicative changes, it provides stable baseline measurement over discrete assessment windows.

Factor Analysis

The structural composition of the Homophily Scales was derived through extensive exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and later corroborated through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Initial Exploratory Factor Analytic Solutions

In their original instrument development work, McCroskey, Richmond, and Daly (1974) drafted an extensive research pool of 46 semantic differential items designed to tap four theoretical domains: Attitude, Background, Value, and Appearance. Administering this 46-item instrument across thousands of respondents rating multiple diverse target persons, the authors subjected the resulting correlation matrices to principal components analysis (PCA) followed by orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations.

The factor extraction criteria employed were:

1. Eigenvalues greater than 1.0 (Kaiser-Guttman criterion).
2. Examination of the Cattell scree plot.
3. Primary factor loadings of at least .60 on the primary factor.
4. Secondary cross-loadings of no greater than .35 on any other factor.

The empirical results demonstrated that the 4-item Attitude Homophily cluster and the 4-item Background Homophily cluster formed exceptionally clean, stable, and distinct orthogonal dimensions. In contrast, items tapping physical appearance and abstract moral values exhibited severe cross-loadings, unstable factor alignment across different target individuals, or low communalities. Consequently, the authors distilled the operational instrument into the two highly reliable 4-item scales.

Item Factor Loadings

Typical factor loading ranges from primary validation studies for the core 8 items are outlined below:

• Attitude Homophily Factor:
  • Is like me / Is unlike me: Loading range .74 – .84
  • Is different from me / Is similar to me: Loading range .78 – .86
  • Thinks like me / Does not think like me: Loading range .80 – .89
  • Doesn’t behave like me / Behaves like me: Loading range .71 – .81
• Background Homophily Factor:
  • Has status like mine / Has status different from mine: Loading range .70 – .82
  • Is from a different social class / Is from the same social class: Loading range .72 – .85
  • Is culturally different / Is culturally similar: Loading range .68 – .80
  • Has an economic situation like mine / Does not have an economic situation like mine: Loading range .73 – .83

Confirmatory Structural Invariance

Later confirmatory factor analyses, such as those conducted by McCroskey et al. (2006), verified the two-factor oblique structural model across multiple communicative domains. Goodness-of-fit indices demonstrated acceptable fit to empirical data (e.g., Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .94, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] < .07, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual [SRMR] < .05), confirming that perceived similarity in interpersonal communication is characterized primarily by ideological/cognitive (Attitude) and socio-structural (Background) dual dimensions.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Homophily Scales (Old version)
• Alternative Titles: Perceived Homophily Scales; McCroskey, Richmond, & Daly Homophily Measure
• Developer / Authors: James C. McCroskey, Virginia P. Richmond, and John A. Daly (1974, 1975)
• Construct Assessed: Perceived Interpersonal Homophily (Perceived Social and Psychological Similarity)
• Instrument Structure:
  • Standard Core Operational Scale: 8 items organized into two 4-item subscales:
    • Attitude Homophily Subscale (4 items)
    • Background Homophily Subscale (4 items)
  • Full Exploratory Research Instrument Pool: 46 semantic differential items designed for broader multi-domain target screening.
• Target Specification: A prompt at the top designates the target communicator: (Name of person to whom participant is asked to respond).
• Response Format: 7-point bipolar semantic differential rating scale. Polar adjectives are arranged with alternating polarities across items to mitigate response acquiescence bias.
• Scale Point Anchoring / Meaning:
  • Numbers 1 and 7 indicate a very strong feeling.
  • Numbers 2 and 6 indicate a strong feeling.
  • Numbers 3 and 5 indicate a fairly weak feeling.
  • Number 4 indicates that the respondent is unsure or undecided.
• Scoring and Transformation Procedures:
  • Prior to calculating composite subscale totals, reverse-score oppositely polarized items so that a value of 7 consistently represents maximum perceived similarity and a value of 1 reflects maximum perceived dissimilarity.
  • Attitude Homophily Scoring: Items 1 and 3 are anchored with the positive (similar) pole on the left (scored 7 down to 1). Items 2 and 4 are anchored with the negative (dissimilar) pole on the left (scored 1 up to 7). Sum the transformed responses for all four items.
  • Background Homophily Scoring: Items 1 and 4 are anchored with the positive pole on the left (scored 7 down to 1). Items 2 and 3 are anchored with the negative pole on the left (scored 1 up to 7). Sum the transformed responses for all four items.
  • Possible Range of Scores: Each subscale yields a composite score ranging from 4 to 28.
• Score Interpretation Guidelines:
  • Composite Score 4–11: Low perceived homophily (strong perceived dissimilarity / heterophily).
  • Composite Score 12–19: Moderate / neutral perceived homophily (perceived ambivalence or average similarity).
  • Composite Score 20–28: High perceived homophily (strong perceived similarity and alignment).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The initial version of the Homophily Scales was presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association in New Orleans in 1974, followed by formal journal publication in Human Communication Research in 1975.

Licensing and Accessibility: In accordance with the longstanding academic philosophy established by Dr. James C. McCroskey and his co-authors, this psychometric measurement tool is placed in the public domain for scholarly research and non-commercial educational use. No licensing fees or formal written permissions are required for academic research, thesis/dissertation projects, or instructional applications, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and bibliographic citation are given to the original authors. Any proposed commercial application, software monetization, or proprietary integration should be verified against relevant institutional copyright policies.

References

Below are primary references documenting the conceptualization, historical development, and validation of the Homophily Scales in communication research:

• Berger, C. R., & Calabrese, R. J. (1975). Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond: Toward a developmental theory of interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 1(2), 99–112. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1975.tb00258.x
• Byrne, D. (1971). The attraction paradigm. Academic Press.
• Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117–140. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872675400700202
• Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1037/10628-000
• Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Merton, R. K. (1954). Friendship as a social process: A substantive and methodological analysis. In M. Berger, T. Abel, & C. H. Page (Eds.), Freedom and control in modern society (pp. 18–66). Van Nostrand.
• McCroskey, J. C., & McCain, T. A. (1974). The measurement of interpersonal attraction. Speech Monographs, 41(3), 261–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637757409375845
• McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P., & Daly, J. A. (1974). Toward the measurement of perceived homophily in interpersonal communication. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the International Communication Association, New Orleans, LA, April 17–20. ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED094433. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED094433.pdf
• McCroskey, J. C., Richmond, V. P., & Daly, J. A. (1975). The development of a measure of perceived homophily in interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research, 1(4), 323–332. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1975.tb00281.x
• McCroskey, L. L., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2006). Analysis and improvement of the measurement of interpersonal attraction and homophily. Communication Quarterly, 54(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463370500270322
• Richmond, V. P. (1990). Communication in the classroom: Power and motivation. Communication Education, 39(3), 181–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529009378801
• Rocca, K. A., & McCroskey, J. C. (1999). The interrelationship of student ratings of instructors’ immediacy, verbal aggressiveness, homophily, and interpersonal attraction. Communication Education, 48(4), 308–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/03634529909379183
• Rogers, E. M., & Bhowmik, D. K. (1970). Homophily-heterophily: Relational concepts for communication research. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34(4), 523–538. https://doi.org/10.1086/267838

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)