Scale of Feelings and Behavior of Love--Revised

Swensen, Clifford H.; Nelson, Michele Killough; Warner, Jan; Dunlap, David

doi:10.1037/t06359-000

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Participants completed several written questionnaires: a demographic questionnaire, which included questions about the length of the marriage and the frequency of church attendance; a questionnaire asking the participant to provide a subjective evaluation of various aspects of the marital relationship; the Scale of Feelings and Behavior of Love: Revised (Swensen et al, 1992a), which is a 120-item scale that yields a total score, scores on six subscales (verbal expression, self-disclosure, toleration, moral support, unexpressed feelings, and material support), and an index score (which is calculated by subtracting the score on the unexpressed feelings subscale from the sum of the scores on the other five subscales); the Scale of Marriage Problems: Revised (Swensen et al, 1992b), which is a 43-item scale that yields a total score and scores on six subscales (problem-solving, childrearing, relatives, personal care, money, and outside. relationships); the Marriage Problems Scale-50+ (Clements and Swensen, 1999), which is a 50-item scale measuring marriage problems; the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS; Spanier, 1976), which is a 32-item scale that yields a total score and scores on four subscales (consensus, cohesion, affectional expression, and satisfaction); and the Sentence Completion Test as a measure of ego development (Hy and Loevinger, 1989).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commitment to one’s spouse as a predictor of marital quality among older couples

Clements

Swensen

2000

Curr Psychol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The present study examined the relationships between several independent variables (ego development, commitment to the spouse, length of marriage, church attendance, and sex of subject) and three marital quality variables (marriage problems, expression of love, and dyadic adjustment) in a community sample of 72 married couples age 50 and up. Commitment to the spouse was the strongest and most consistent predictor of marital quality; commitment was negatively related to marriage problems and positively related to expression of love and dyadic adjustment. The other independent variables were generally unrelated to marital quality.The quality of an older person's marital relationship is one of the key determinants of that person's quality of life and level of life satisfaction (Antonucci and Jackson, 1987;Levenson et al., 1993;Rook, 1984). Haynes et al. (1992, p. 473) note that the marital relationship "can mediate the effects of the stressors associated with aging and serve as an important source of social support," and they cite research supporting this claim (Antonucci and Akiyama, 1987;Medley, 1980). However, in spite of the importance of the marital relationship for many older persons, relatively little research has been conducted on the quality of marital relationships in later life. Instead, most of the research on marital relationships has focused on the relationships of young couples. Several researchers have noted this gap in the literature and have called for more research on the marital relationships of older couples (e.g., Condie, 1989;Levenson et al., 1993;Treas and Bengtson, 1987). The present study was designed to help fill this gap in the marital literature by examining the relationships between several independent variables and three different dimensions of marital quality (a "negative" dimension, that of marital problems, and two "positive" dimensions, the expression of love between spouses and "dyadic adjustment" [Spanier, 1976]) in a sample of older individuals. The predictor variables that were included in the present study were chosen on the basis of results of past research (with couples of various ages) which suggested that these variables might be predictive of the quality of older couples' marital relationships. These variables included ego development, commitment to the spouse, length of marriage, church attendance, and the sex of the subject.

show abstract

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commitment to one’s spouse as a predictor of marital quality among older couples

Clements

Swensen

2000

Curr Psychol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The nine instruments are  Attitudes Toward Love Scale ( Knox & Sporakowski, 1968)  A Love Attitudes Inventory: Revised (Knox, 1983)  Love Attitudes Scale Hendrick et al, 1998)  Miller Love Scale (Miller, 1998)  Passionate Love Scale: (Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986)  The Personal Relationship inventory (Mann. 1991)  Rubin's Love Scale (1970)  Scale of Feelings and Behavior of Love: Revised (Swenson, Nelson, Warner, & Dunlap, 1992)  Sternberg's Triangular Love Scale (Sternberg, 1988) Attitudes Toward Love Scale (ATLS). The ATLS (Knox & Sporakowski, 1968) is a 29-item, self-report questionnaire designed to ascertain an individual's attitudes toward love along a continuum ranging from romantic to nonromantic or conjugal.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The authors provide scores for a norm group of 216 married people as a basis for comparison when interpreting the results. The mean age of the sample was 42 years, and the participants had been married an average of 18.27 years (Swenson et al, 1992). Cronbach's alphas for the subscale scores range from .78 (Toleration) to .97 (Unexpressed Feelings).…”

Section: Scale Of Feelings and Behavior Of Lovementioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Positive Emotionality: A Review of Instruments Assessing Love

Myers

Shurts

2002

Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Love is a multidimensional construct that has proven difficult to define and, consequently, challenging to measure. A variety of available instruments purport to measure aspects of love, 9 of which are reviewed and discussed in this article. Researchers and practitioners are advised to study definitions of the love construct as well as psychometric properties of instruments in selecting measures of love appropriate to their purposes. Article: The importance of love has been acknowledged for centuries in the writings of philosophers (e.g., Plato), theologians e.g., St. Paul, 1 Corinthians), and scholars (e.g., Maslow) (O'Sullivan & O'Leary, 1992). Yet love consistently has been defined as somewhat of-a mystery‖ (Jung, 1961, p. 353) "with which we are psychologically preoccupied" (Powell, 1978, p. 14). Early researchers in the last century explained love as a unidimensional construct reflecting interpersonal attraction and viewed liking and loving as the anchors of a linear continuum (Huston, 1974): others considered movement on the continuum to be the result of interpersonal attraction, the latter consisting of cognitive, affective, and behavioral components (Berscheid & Walster, 1978). Lee's (1977) typology of six love styles has dominated much of the theory and research in the past 20 years; Sternberg's (1986) triangular theory of love and eight kinds of love also serve as the basis for research and clinical practice. Multiple definitions have resulted in multiple measures of lore, leaving researchers and practitioners with the dilemma of selecting the most appropriate measures for their purposes. There was a noticeable lack of research involving love during the 1950s and 1960s (Curtin, 1973; Elkins & Smith, 1979). Wrightsman and Deaux (1981) noted that during that period, researchers "believed love [was] too mysterious and too intangible for scientific study" (p. 170). However, during the mid-1970s and early 1980s, love became "respectable as an area for study by psychologists" (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1986, p. 392). This professional acceptance resulted in a renewed focus during the 1990s on defining, measuring, and examining love's components, variables, and overall importance as part of holistic well-being (see, e.g., Beall & Sternberg, 1995; Thompson & Borrello, 1992b). Holistic approaches included love as a key life task that is necessary to achieve optimum individual wellness (see. e.g., Myers, Sweeney, & Witmer, 2000: Sweeney & Witmer, 1991). As we entered the new millennium, individuals promoting the "positive psychology" movement began encouraging psychologists to use similar strength-based practices in their work. Lead theorists and practitioners called for a new locus on the-actions [that] lead to well-being, to positive individuals, and to thriving communities" (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 5) rather than on pathology and negativism. Finding ways to both assess and encourage love and loving relationships certainly falls within the framework of this overall trend in the field. The current view ...

show abstract

“…For information on the scale’s ity, see Swensen (1961 (contains only a few sample items of the 383 item scale), 1990 (describes the history of the scale and contains a few of the revised 120-item scale items), Swensen and Gilner (1964) and Swensen et al (1992; contains the 383-item revised scale) (for a critique of this measure, see Swensen and Fuller, 1992).…”

Section: Scalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A brief history of social scientists’ attempts to measure passionate love

Hatfield

Bensman

Rapson

2011

Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The concept of passionate love has a long history, yet it was not until the 1940s that social scientists created tools designed to measure this emotion. Over the next 60 years, numerous scales of romantic and passionate love were created and tested. Currently, however, there exists no single compendium of existing scales. This paper attempts to fill in the missing information on existing love scales by providing a list of 33 different measures and indicating where each scale's reliability and validity information can be found. We close by attempting to explain how scholars' conceptions of the nature of love have changed over the years, and how these historical and scientific changes are reflected in the scales designed to measure passionate love.

show abstract

Scale of Feelings and Behavior of Love--Revised

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Commitment to one’s spouse as a predictor of marital quality among older couples

Commitment to one’s spouse as a predictor of marital quality among older couples

Measuring Positive Emotionality: A Review of Instruments Assessing Love

A brief history of social scientists’ attempts to measure passionate love

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About