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Social Dominance Orientation (SDO7)

SDO7
psychologysocial sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no licence fee. Cite the original publication.

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
7-point scale (1 = strongly oppose, 7 = strongly favor)
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 con-trait items). In the validation samples, internal consistency of the full scale ranged from α = .89 to .95 (Ho et al., 2015).

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Reliability & validation

Validation population
Seven U.S. adult samples (MTurk, SocialSci, Qualtrics Panels and GfK KnowledgePanel; total N = 3,107) reported in Ho et al. (2015)
Cronbach's α
0.89–0.95

Subscales

SDO-DominanceSDO-Anti-Egalitarianism

Response anchors

Strongly oppose · Somewhat oppose · Slightly oppose · Neutral · Slightly favor · Somewhat favor · Strongly favor

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, so 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

Questions researchers ask

What does the SDO7 measure?

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).

How many items does the SDO7 have?

The Social Dominance Orientation (SDO7) (SDO7) has 16 items across 2 subscales: SDO-Dominance, SDO-Anti-Egalitarianism.

Is the SDO7 free to use?

The SDO7 is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the SDO7 reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.89–0.95. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the SDO7, and how do I cite it?

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 September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference; item wording is available inside Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing.