Different versions of the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMSS) were administered with five and seven-point responses to 154 Army personnel. High internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha > .95) was obtained using both types of response formats. Both versions of the KMSS also correlated substantially with a measure of marital instability. Scores on the KMSS strongly predicted categories of soldiers indicating their marriage was not "in trouble," "was in trouble," or they would be getting divorced. Either version of the scale appears suitable for future research with samples of active duty U.S. military personnel while either version may serve as a useful brief measure of marital adjustment for clinicians working with distressed military families. Average KMSS scores were significantly lower than those obtained in studies of Army personnel conducted in the 1980s (Bowen, 1991; Green, Harris, Forte, et al., 1991).
Schumm et al. (Sat,) studied this question.