The Development and Predictive Validity of a New Premarital Assessment Instrument: The Preparation for Marriage Questionnaire

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to describe the development of a comprehensive (multi-item/multi-concept) premarital assessment instrument, the PREParation for Marriage Questionnaire, or PREP-M (Holman, Busby, & Larson, 1989) and to test some of the psychometric properties of the The test of PREP-M's psychometric properties included an evaluation of internal consistency reliability and a test of the predictive validity of PREP-M using a sample of 103 couples who completed the questionnaire before marriage and then completed a survey of marital status and satisfaction about one year after marriage. RATIONALE FOR A NEW INSTRUMENT In presenting his ideas on what would constitute an effective premarital program, Olson (1983) states, Ideally, it would be best if a couple could first take some type of premarital inventory and receive feedback on that instrument. With any preventive approach, an assessment instrument is useful for critically examining relationships and providing information about the couple's strengths and potential problem areas. While there are several comprehensive premarital assessment instruments available, none adequately meet the needs of the family life educator or premarital counselor who teaches students in a classroom setting or conducts group premarital counseling. Most of the existing instruments are narrow in their focus and designed only for engaged couples (e.g., Marital Role Expectation Inventory; Dunn, 1979), exclusively or primarily for use in a counseling setting with one couple at a time (e.g., PREPARE; Olson, Fournier, & Druckman, 1986; California Marriage Readiness Evaluation; Manson, 1965; Premarital Counseling Inventory; Stuart, Jacobson, & Guire, 1985), or by pastoral counselors (e.g., Facilitating Open Couple Communication, Understanding and Study (FOCCUS); Markey, Micheletto, & Becker, 1985), and exclusively or primarily to assess interpersonal couple characteristics (e.g., PREPARE; Olson, et al., 1986). Many instruments measure one or two specific areas of relationships, such as sexual attitudes (e.g., Sexual Attitudes Scale; Hendrick & Hendrick, 1987) or communication (e.g., Marital Communication Inventory; Bienvenu, 1970), but they are frequently designed for married couples (e.g., Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Test; Locke & Wallace, 1959) or for research (e.g., Dyadic Adjustment Scale; Spanier, 1976) rather than pedagogical purposes. For the high school, college, university, or church classroom setting a premarital instrument was needed that: (a) was designed primarily or exclusively for assessing the premarital relationship; (b) was flexible enough to use not only with engaged couples, but also with non-dating, casually dating, seriously dating, or cohabitating individuals; (c) was comprehensive enough to include an analysis of most of the important theoretically- and empirically-derived premarital predictors of marital satisfaction, including those especially interesting and meaningful to unmarried individuals, family life educators, and premarital counselors; (d) produced a useful, accurate, and easily understood output for users that could be interpreted without the assistance of a counselor; (e) was economical and easy to administer; (f) was psychometrically reliable and valid; (g) was theoretically and empirically grounded; and (h) produced data for research purposes and development purposes. A review of the most popular existing instruments (see above) showed that none of them simultaneously met more than four of these eight objectives. PREP-M was designed to meet all eight objectives. DEVELOPMENT OF PREP-M PREP-M was originally developed in 1980 and was known then as The Marital Inventories (MI) (Yorgason, Burr, & Baker, 1980). The MI was designed primarily for unmarried couples and contained over 350 items measuring each individual's values, role expectations, personality, and couple interaction. …

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