Dimensionality of the Kansas Family Strengths Scale and the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale as Revised to Capture Changes in Marital Satisfaction

Abstract

The Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale was modified to reflect issues of relationship development and administered, along with 19 items from a previously reported Kansas Family Strengths Scale by Schumm, Bollman, Jurich, and Hatch, to 337 married couples from a midwestern urban community. High internal consistency was obtained for the revised version (α = .93), and the dimensionality of the Kansas Family Strengths Scale was approximately similar to that reported previously. In both this and the previous study, communication and conflict resolution items factored together while items for enjoying time together and actually spending time together factored separately. Likewise, in both studies, normative and affective commitment factored separately, and the internal consistency of the affective commitment subscale exceeded that for the normative commitment subscale. While the subscales for affective commitment, communication or conflict resolution, positive interaction, and time together yielded fair to adequate internal consistency in both studies, both studies indicated very low internal consistency for the normative commitment subscale, suggesting a need for improvement in that particular subscale.