Quality of Romantic Relationships - Subject Baseline
This measure appears in the following time-points: Baseline.
Related Construct
Description of Measure
The Quality of Romantic Relationships inventory was adapted for this study to evaluate the support, conflict, and depth of the adolescent's romantic relationships (Pierce, 1994; Pierce, Sarason, Sarason, Solky-Butzel, & Nagle, 1997). The 26 items in the scale assess the Quality of Relationship (e.g., "In general, how happy are you with your relationship?"), Knowledge of Behavior and Deviance (e.g., "How much does {Name} know who you spend time with?"), and Tolerance of Deviance (e.g., "Would {Name} know if you have been using drugs?"), and Antisocial Influence (e.g., "Has X suggested that you should sell drugs?"). The Antisocial Influence subscale was derived from items mirroring the ones asked regarding peer delinquency; but using the romantic partner, not the peers, as the referent person. In addition, for those youth who live with their romantic partner, two additional questions assess how much the romantic partner monitors the behavior of the participant. For each question, the participant responds on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from "not at all" to "very much"; therefore, higher scores indicating a more symbiotic romantic relationship.
A three factor model including the Quality of Relationship, Knowledge of Behavior, and Tolerance of Deviance subscales (the original model from Pierce et al., 1997) was fit to the baseline data using CFA. The three factor model fit the data adequately (NFI=0.89, NNFI=0.909, CFI=0.924, RMSEA=0.051). The single subscale for Quality of Relationship was also fit to the baseline data as a single scale, also showing adequate consistency and fit on its own (alpha: .69; NFI: .94; NNFI: .94; CFI: .96; RMSEA: .05). Analyses have not been done for the subscales for Antisocial Influence, Antisocial Behavior or Monitoring.
The Quality of Relationship scale was also found to have good internal consistency at the follow-up time points (6 month alpha = .78; 12 month alpha = .80; 18 month alpha = .81; 24 month alpha = .83).
We compute four scores from this measure:
- Romantic Relationship - Quality of Relationship [s0relqlt]; mean of 7 items
- Romantic Relationship - Tolerance of Deviance [s0reldev]; mean of 2 items
- Romantic Relationship - Monitoring [s0relcon] mean of 5 items
- Romantic Relationship - Antisocial Influence, relies on items from the peer delinquency section to assess the antisocial influence from the romantic partner [s0del] count of 7 items
Data Issues
- This measure is skipped if the subject is not currently married (s0rel102) and if they do not currently have a boyfriend/girlfriend (s0rel103). If the subject is married or has a boyfriend/girlfriend, then but they have been together for less than one month (s0rel104), then the measure is also skipped. These rules affect three summary scores (s0relqlt, s0reldev, and s0relcon); it does not impact s0del.
- The items from the peer delinquency measure that are used in the computation of s0del were only asked if the subject had a boyfriend or girlfriend (s0rel103). They were not asked if the subject was married (s0rel102).
References
- Hendrick, S. (1998) A generic measure of relationship satisfaction. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 50, 93-98.
- Hendrick , S.S., Dicke, A., Hendrick, C. (1998). The Relationship Assessment Scale. Journal of Social & personal relationships, 15(1), 137-142.
- Pierce, G.P. (1994). The quality of relationships inventory: assessing the interpersonal context of social support. In B.R. Burleson, T.L. Albrecht, and I.G. Sarason (eds), Communication of Social Support: Messages, Interactions, Relationships, and Community, (247-266). Newbury Park CA: Sage.
- Pierce, G., Sarason, I.G., Sarason, B.R., Solky-Butzel, J.A., and Nagle, L.C. (1997). Assessing the quality of personal relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 14, 339-356.