A REVISION OF THE DYADIC ADJUSTMENT SCALE FOR USE WITH DISTRESSED ANDNONDISTRESSED COUPLES - CONSTRUCT HIERARCHY AND MULTIDIMENSIONAL SCALES

The existing research on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) indicated t hat there were problems with some of the subscales and individual item s. This study was designed to improve the instrument by following the standards of construct hierarchy. Through previous research and the an alyses in this study, the subscales were found to contain some items t hat were homogeneous and others that were more heterogeneous. This pro blem was corrected by selecting out items that were homogeneous; 7 fir st-order scales were created which were combined to create the 3 secon d-order concepts of consensus, satisfaction, and cohesion. With a samp le of distressed and nondistressed couples, a series of confirmatory f actor analyses was conducted. The factor analyses provided evidence fo r the construct validity of the new structure of the Revised DAS (RDAS ) with the distressed, nondistressed, and total samples of this study, as well as with the sample from Spanier and Thompson's (1982) study. Additional analyses correlating the RDAS with another popular marital instrument provided more evidence for the construct validity of the RD AS. Criterion validity was demonstrated by discriminant analyses resul ts. Both internal consistency and split-half reliability estimates dem onstrated that the RDAS was reliable. The results also supported divid ing the RDAS into two alternative forms far use in pre- and posttest s tudies. Summary statistics for the RDAS are presented as are implicati ons for the field of marriage and family therapy.