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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 license 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. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.