Development and Validation of Romantic Relations Scale for Adolescents (RRS-A)

Background. Romantic relations are usually taken as hallmark of adolescence and consideredimportant relational factors in the development and well-being of adolescents. As no instrument wasavailable to measure perception of romantic relations by adolescents living in eastern religiouscollectivist developing society, therefore, the main objective of this study was to develop anindigenous scale to measure perception of romantic relations by adolescents, both boys and girls.Methods. Three studies were conducted with adolescents’ samples, age ranging from 16 to 18years. Study 1 was conducted to generate item pool. Study 2 was conducted to determine factorstructure and psychometric properties of the scale on sample of 506 adolescents. And study 3 wascarried out to confirm factor structure through confirmatory factor analysis on another sample ofadolescents (N = 647).Results. In first study, a pool of 151 items was generated. In second study, Principal Axis Factoringwith Promax rotation was used for 1st order exploratory factor analysis that resulted in generationof 13 factors consisting of 74 items. Cronbach’s Alpha for factors ranged from .61 to .88. Secondorder factor analysis resulted in three dimensions named as Intimacy (? = .94), Passion (? = .83)and Distrust (? = .84). Finally, in third study, results of hierarchical confirmatory factor analysisshowed that scale had construct validity.Conclusion. The results indicate that Romantic Relations Scale for Adolescents (RRS-A) is acomprehensive, valid, and reliable measure to assess the perception of romantic relations inadolescents.