Development of Relational Turbulence Scale for Young Married Individuals

Abstract

The present study was intended to develop a measure of relational turbulence for the young married individuals in Pakistan's cultural framework. In the first phase of developing scale, 19 semistructured interviews were taken from married individuals. The married individuals were taken with inclusion criteria of 1-5 years marital duration and age between 21-40 years to generate an item pool that encompassed 45 items. Based on connection, similarity or matching themes, 29 items were finalized after 11 experts' validation and piloted on 8 participants. To determine psychometric properties of scale, Relational Turbulence Scale (RTS) was presented along with demographic sheet to 156 young married individuals (67 men, 89 women) with age range 21-40 years. Principal Component Analysis of RTS comprised of three different factors namely Lack Understanding, Apprehensions, and Lack of Support. Moreover, RTS was found to have high internal consistency (.83), test-retest reliability .83 (p < .001), split half reliability of .82 (p < .001), and acceptable convergent validity. Furthermore, results are discussed in context of factor structure of RTS, demographics, and risk factors as predictors of RTS in cultural context.