Development and Validation of Pre-Marital Anxiety Scale

Abstract

Present study intends to develop an indigenous tool to measure Pre-Marital Anxiety in adults of Pakistan and to
assess psychometric properties of Pre-Marital Anxiety Scale (PMAS). Phenomenon of Pre-Marital Anxiety was
explored by identifying the themes related to Pre-Marital Anxiety in youth. After wards by conducting the
interviews and focus groups with adults (both men & women) and Match Maker, list of 81 items was drawn.
Face and content validity was evaluated with relevance to clarity and construct on three-point rating. Items that
bear above 20% on “NO” on relevance to construct were excluded. Pilot study was conducted to remove any
ambiguity in items. Construct validity of PMAS with final 47 items was evaluated through Principal Component
Analysis that came into results with six factor solution named as Anxiety to maintain relationship, Anxiety about
proposal, Anxiety about Spouse, In-laws Concerns, Future concerns and financial concerns. Alpha reliability
was α=.94. Whereas PMAS was evaluated for Test-Retest Reliability which was (r=.87). Convergent and
Divergent validity were also evaluated which was (r= .55) and (r= -.60) respectively. It was concluded that
PMAS is a valid and reliable tool to measure Pre-Marital Anxiety in youth.