The Scaling of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness

Guttman scales for measuring premarital sexual permissiveness are presented and analyzed. The scales have been tested on national adult samples and on student samples. A difference appears in the scale order of questions for the high permissive and low permissive groups. This difference centers about the high permissive groups giving less relative support to affectionless kissing and petting behavior while giving more relative support to coital behavior. The basic 12-item scale may be broken down into several subscales for particular research problems. These scales allow one to classify respondents into various premarital sexual standards and to measure the level of sexual permissiveness.