Perceived Treatment Discrimination toward Sexual Minorities

Abstract

The Perceived Treatment Discrimination toward Sexual Minorities scale is an established self-report psychometric instrument designed to assess subjective appraisals of unfair treatment, bias, marginalization, and inequitable distribution of organizational resources experienced by or directed toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals within workplace environments. Grounded in the seminal organizational research of Scott B. Button (1996, 2001, 2004) and subsequently utilized in identity disclosure and minority stress research (e.g., Fisher, 2012), this 9-item measurement tool operationalizes workplace treatment discrimination as distinct from formal access discrimination. While access discrimination focuses on institutional barriers to entering an organization (such as hiring bias), treatment discrimination encompasses daily interpersonal interactions, performance evaluation processes, promotion opportunities, organizational benefits, interpersonal affirmation, and informal inclusion or exclusion. The instrument is administered using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 7 (Agree), with selected items reverse-coded to create a unified composite score reflecting overall perceived organizational hostility or fairness. Psychometric evaluations across multiple organizational samples demonstrate robust internal consistency reliability (with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .84 to .92), solid construct validity through clear convergent associations with organizational climate, psychological safety, and identity concealment, as well as divergent validity against generalized job dissatisfaction and negative affectivity. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses support a coherent unidimensional structure of institutional treatment discrimination or a two-factor structure delineating affirmative institutional climate versus direct inequitable treatment. This instrument remains vital for industrial-organizational psychologists, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) researchers, and occupational health professionals seeking to diagnose minority workplace stress and assess organizational climate.

Keywords

treatment discrimination, sexual minorities, workplace discrimination, organizational climate, minority stress theory, Scott B. Button, sexual orientation diversity, identity management, LGBT workplace psychology, psychometrics

Authors

The conceptualization, operationalization, and empirical validation of the underlying constructs and initial item battery were established by Scott B. Button, Ph.D.

• Primary Author: Scott B. Button, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, The Pennsylvania State University (doctoral dissertation research, 1996); later affiliated with private organizational consulting and research institutions focusing on diversity metrics, employee selection, and identity disclosure dynamics.
• Significant Subsequent Investigators: Dr. Lauren Dyan Fisher, Department of Psychology, Columbia University (Fisher, 2012), whose work expanded the application of Button’s scales to examine antecedents and outcomes of sexual orientation disclosure among lesbian employees in corporate and public settings.
• Corresponding Academic Context: Inquiries regarding the historical baseline of the scale are typically directed toward Button’s foundational publications in the Journal of Applied Psychology (2001) and Group & Organization Management (2004), or through Columbia University’s Academic Commons repository.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Perceived Treatment Discrimination toward Sexual Minorities scale is to provide a quantitatively rigorous, theoretically grounded metric for evaluating the extent to which sexual minority employees perceive that their workplace systematically penalizes, excludes, or fails to affirm lesbian and gay personnel. In organizational behavior and industrial-organizational psychology, discrimination has long been bifurcated into two primary operational categories: access discrimination and treatment discrimination.

Access discrimination occurs when individuals face biased barriers when attempting to secure membership in an organization, such as discriminatory hiring practices, biased interview evaluations, or pre-employment exclusion. In contrast, treatment discrimination takes place once an individual is already employed within an organization. It encompasses unfair conditions regarding interpersonal relationships, task allocations, access to mentoring, formal and informal performance evaluations, compensation, health and familial benefits, and social participation in workplace-sponsored community events. Because formal anti-discrimination laws and human resource policies increasingly prohibit overt hiring bias, modern workplace prejudice against sexual minorities frequently shifts into more subtle, pervasive forms of treatment discrimination. This scale was explicitly engineered to capture these nuanced experiences.

From an applied perspective, organizational consultants and human resource leaders use the scale to conduct organizational climate audits, gauge employee trust, assess the authentic implementation of corporate diversity initiatives, and measure the effectiveness of sexual diversity training programs. In academic research, the instrument serves as a critical independent, mediating, or moderating variable in empirical models predicting employee turnover intentions, affective organizational commitment, job performance, psychological burnout, and identity management strategies (e.g., passing, covering, or open disclosure).

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by this instrument is perceived treatment discrimination against sexual minorities in organizational contexts. Rather than attempting to serve as an objective legal audit of institutional behavior, the instrument captures the psychological reality and cognitive appraisals of employees regarding their immediate working environment. Perceived discrimination operates as a proximal psychological stressor within the framework of minority stress theory.

The construct encompasses several distinct yet highly interrelated behavioral and institutional facets:

• Institutional Affirmation and Executive Leadership: Evaluates whether high-level organizational leaders actively model and reinforce equity, and whether corporate executive rhetoric is perceived as genuine, supportive, and protective of sexual minority rights (e.g., Items 1 and 2).
• Formal Policy Equity: Captures whether formal workplace rules, grievance mechanisms, and non-discrimination frameworks exist and are enforced equitably without tacit heterosexist double standards (e.g., Items 3 and 5).
• Educational and Cultural Climate: Examines whether organizational diversity training translates into tangible social support and inclusive peer behavior among coworkers (e.g., Item 6).
• Distributive Inequity in Tangible Rewards: Measures institutional bias in the allocation of concrete career outcomes, such as performance ratings, equitable compensation, professional development, and promotional advancement (e.g., Item 7).
• Structural and Benefits Disparity: Assesses whether structural compensation mechanisms, notably partner healthcare benefits, parental leave, or pension survivor policies, equitably accommodate same-sex relationships (e.g., Item 8).
• Informal and Social Inclusion: Measures social boundary enforcement, examining whether lesbian and gay employees encounter implicit or explicit resistance when participating in non-task social functions (such as holiday parties, social banquets, or company picnics) accompanied by same-sex partners (e.g., Item 9).

When aggregated, these dimensions represent an integrated psychological construct reflecting an organizational climate that spans the continuum from deeply hostile and heterosexist to fully affirming and psychologically safe.

Theoretical Framework

The development of the Perceived Treatment Discrimination toward Sexual Minorities scale is anchored in the integration of three foundational theoretical models within organizational and social psychology:

1. Minority Stress Theory

Originating in the works of Virginia Brooks (1981) and comprehensively articulated by Ilan H. Meyer (1995, 2003), minority stress theory posits that sexual minorities experience chronic, unique, and socially conditioned distal and proximal stressors. Distal stressors consist of external, objective events such as prejudice, institutional discrimination, and microaggressions. Proximal stressors represent internal subjective states, including expectations of rejection, hypervigilance, and internalized homophobia. The Perceived Treatment Discrimination scale bridges these two spheres by measuring the cognitive appraisal of distal workplace bias. When employees perceive high treatment discrimination, the distal stressor converts into persistent cognitive strain, taxing coping reserves and elevating risks of depression, anxiety, and occupational burnout.

2. Organizational Climate and Signaling Theory

Organizational climate theory, rooted in Kurt Lewin’s field theory and developed by Benjamin Schneider (1975, 1990), argues that employees interpret organizational policies, practices, and reward systems to make sense of expected and valued behaviors. In tandem with signaling theory (Spence, 1973), an organization’s actions—such as offering equal benefits or discouraging same-sex partners from social gatherings—serve as critical signals regarding the acceptability of minority identities. Scott Button synthesized these perspectives to demonstrate that institutional policies function as signals that either validate sexual minority employees or signal vulnerability, shaping the broader workplace climate.

3. Identity Management and Stigma Concealment Frameworks

Unlike visible demographic markers such as race or gender, sexual orientation represents a concealable stigmatized identity (Goffman, 1963; Ragins, 2008). Drawing from Button’s (2004) conceptualization, sexual minority employees continuously assess their workplace environment to determine their identity management strategies—spanning counterfeiting (fabricating a heterosexual persona), avoidance (withholding personal information), or integration (full disclosure). Perceived treatment discrimination is the foundational cognitive antecedent in this decision-making process: elevated perceived discrimination reliably forces individuals into concealment or hypervigilant identity management, significantly degrading job satisfaction and psychological well-being.

Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established strong empirical validity for the Perceived Treatment Discrimination toward Sexual Minorities scale across diverse professional sectors, including corporate, academic, and governmental environments.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity has been verified through significant convergent associations with conceptually related variables. Studies by Button (2001, 2004) and Fisher (2012) found that perceived treatment discrimination correlates positively and significantly with:

• Workplace heterosexism and microaggressions (r values typically ranging from .48 to .62, p < .001).
• Turnover intentions and psychological withdrawal (r = .34 to .45, p < .01).
• Psychological distress, anxiety, and depression measured on standard clinical inventories (r = .28 to .39, p < .01).
• Identity concealment, covering, and passing behaviors in the workplace (r = .36 to .51, p < .001).

Conversely, perceived treatment discrimination exhibits strong negative correlations with organizational support (r = -.52 to -.67), affective organizational commitment (r = -.40 to -.56), job satisfaction (r = -.38 to -.50), and psychological safety (r = -.55, p < .001).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by evaluating the scale against general negative affectivity, generalized neuroticism, and generic workplace incivility. Confirmatory factor analyses utilizing nested model comparisons confirm that perceived sexual minority treatment discrimination forms an empirically distinct construct from generalized interpersonal workplace deviance or routine job strain, exhibiting average shared variance (ASV) well below the average variance extracted (AVE) for each respective construct.

Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity

Predictive validity is evidenced by the scale’s capacity to forecast longitudinal outcomes. In multi-level organizational analyses, workplace environments characterized by higher perceived treatment discrimination scores predicted elevated actual voluntary employee attrition rates over 12- and 24-month periods, higher absenteeism, and significantly depressed employee engagement metrics among sexual minority personnel, even after controlling for salary, tenure, and job level.

Reliability

The scale consistently exhibits strong reliability across various empirical investigations:

• Internal Consistency: In Scott B. Button’s (1996, 2001) foundational validation samples, the scale demonstrated high internal consistency, yielding a overall Cronbach’s alpha of α = .89. In subsequent investigations examining identity disclosure (Button, 2004), alpha estimates remained consistent at α = .88 to .91.
• Independent Cohort Replication: In Lauren Dyan Fisher’s (2012) study examining antecedents and consequences of sexual orientation disclosure among lesbians, the scale achieved an internal consistency coefficient of α = .87, illustrating strong reliability across distinct gender cohorts within the sexual minority umbrella.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across the 9 items reliably exceed .45, with the majority falling between .58 and .76, confirming that each item contributes meaningfully to the overall scale score without excessive redundancy.
• Test-Retest Stability: Where longitudinal or panel designs have been deployed across 6- to 8-week test intervals under stable organizational conditions, test-retest reliability coefficients have exceeded r = .81, confirming that the instrument measures a stable organizational climate appraisal rather than transient affective states.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Perceived Treatment Discrimination toward Sexual Minorities scale has been assessed using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During initial scale development, principal axis factoring and principal components analysis with varimax and promax rotations indicated an eigenvalue distribution supporting either a dominant single-factor solution or a well-differentiated two-factor solution:

• Factor 1: Direct Discriminatory Practices & Inequity (accounting for the majority of common variance; comprising Items 4, 7, 8, and 9), with factor loadings ranging from .64 to .84.
• Factor 2: Institutional Affirmation & Supportive Climate (comprising reverse-scored Items 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6), with factor loadings ranging from .60 to .81.

Because the inter-factor correlation between these two dimensions is high (|r| > .60), researchers commonly collapse the items into a single composite index representing total perceived treatment discrimination.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent CFA investigations by Button (2001) and subsequent researchers evaluated the fit of a unidimensional versus a correlated two-factor model. The correlated two-factor model, as well as a hierarchical model where a second-order general factor accounts for both dimensions, typically yields excellent goodness-of-fit indices:

• χ²/df ratio < 2.50
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI) ≥ .95
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) ≥ .94
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≤ .055 (with 90% CI [.038, .071])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≤ .042

These findings substantiate that although the items sample both positive affirmation and active exclusion, they reliably map onto a unified latent continuum of organizational treatment discrimination.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Construct Measured: Perceived organizational treatment discrimination and workplace climate regarding sexual minorities.
• Format: 9-item self-report questionnaire.
• Administration Mode: Paper-and-pencil or computerized self-administered survey (individual or group administration).
• Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes.
• Target Population: Employed adults, particularly lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees, as well as broader workplace samples evaluating institutional diversity climate.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Slightly Disagree
  • 4 = Uncertain
  • 5 = Slightly Agree
  • 6 = Strongly Agree
  • 7 = Agree
• Scoring Protocol:
  • Reverse Coding: Items 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 represent positive institutional affirmation and fairness; these items must be reverse-coded prior to computing the overall discrimination index (e.g., in a 7-point format: transformed score = 8 − original score, taking care to map the scale anchors consistently).
  • Direct Scoring: Items 4, 7, 8, and 9 directly express unfairness, promotional disparities, benefits withholding, and social exclusion, and are scored as stated.
  • Composite Calculation: Sum or average the 9 items. Higher mean scores indicate greater perceived treatment discrimination (i.e., a more hostile, unsupportive, and discriminatory organizational climate), whereas lower mean scores reflect an equitable, affirming, and inclusive workplace environment.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Initial Publication Year: 1996 (Doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University; published in peer-reviewed form in 2001).
• Copyright & Intellectual Property: The copyright for the original scales is held by the original author (Dr. Scott B. Button) and the publishing academic journals (e.g., American Psychological Association for the Journal of Applied Psychology; SAGE Publications for Group & Organization Management).
• Accessibility for Academic & Research Use: The scale is widely considered an open-access research instrument for non-commercial, scholarly, educational, and scientific investigations. Academic researchers may utilize the instrument without royalties, provided standard APA academic citation is given to Button’s primary publications.
• Commercial & Consulting Applications: Use of the scale within proprietary corporate climate audits, fee-for-service consulting packages, or commercial psychometric testing platforms may require explicit licensing authorization or permission from the copyright holders.

References

• Brooks, V. R. (1981). Minority stress and lesbian women. Lexington Books.
• Button, S. B. (1996). Organizational efforts to affirm sexual diversity: A multi-level examination (Doctoral dissertation). The Pennsylvania State University. Available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database. (UMI No. 9702260).
• Button, S. B. (2001). Organizational efforts to affirm sexual diversity: A cross-level examination. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(1), 17–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.1.17
• Button, S. B. (2004). Identity management strategies utilized by lesbian and gay employees: A quantitative investigation. Group & Organization Management, 29(4), 470–494. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059601103257417
• Fisher, L. D. (2012). Antecedents and outcomes of sexual orientation disclosure in the workplace among lesbians (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University Academic Commons. https://doi.org/10.7916/D861159M
• Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Prentice-Hall.
• Meyer, I. H. (1995). Minority stress and mental health in gay men. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 36(1), 38–56. https://doi.org/10.2307/2137286
• Meyer, I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674
• Ragins, B. R. (2008). Disclosure disconnects: Antecedents and consequences of disclosing invisible stigmas across life domains. Academy of Management Review, 33(1), 194–215. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.27752724
• Schneider, B. (1975). Organizational climates: An essay. Personnel Psychology, 28(4), 447–479. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1975.tb01386.x

Items of the Scale