Development of the Couples Inventories and Testing the Reliability of the Communications Items

This study is a revision of the Marital Inventories so that both self-perception and perception of other data can be collected. The revised inventory, titled the Couples Inventories, was administered to a population of 183 couples comprised mainly of university students from communities across the United States. From the collected data, principal components factor analysis with varimax rotation was used to analyze the items addressing couple communication. This study analyzed data from self-perception and perception of other, as well as including the variables of the respondent\u27s age and gender as a test for structural equivalence. As a test of reliability Theta, a special case of Cronbach Alpha, was calculated for the identified factors. The major findings of this study were: (a) perception of other is critical to the understanding of relationship communication; (b) structural equivalence enables researchers to identify those items that have utility for heterosexual couples at various ages; (c) openness, understanding, problem solving, and conflict management are crucial dimensions of communication; (d) openness is comprised of at least two dimensions; namely, general openness and emotional openness; and (e) understanding is unidimensional as opposed to a continuum ranging from understanding to misunderstanding