An Assessment of the Validity of the Marital Satisfaction Scale -Mss of Roach , Frazier, Bowden-

결혼만족도척도의 타당화 연구 -Roach, Frazier, Bowden의 Marital Satisfaction Scal-

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the Marital Satisfaction Scale(M.S.S) is properly applicable to Korean couples and further to be devoted to the designed of a marital satisfaction scale for Korea. The scale employed in this study was a Korean adaptation of the M.S.S., which originally included 73 items but was reduced to 48 through a study of its validity by Bowden. This scale was administered to 420 couples. One kindergarten, two elementary schools, one middle school, and four high schools, all of them located in Seoul or its satellite cities were selected for the present study. The results of the study were as follows. 1) Through item analysis, 85.4% of the total items showed a high index of discrimination, i.e, of more than +.40, which all was significant discrimination (P<0.001) excluding two items. 2)Factor analysis, which was oriented toward combining factors proper to theory, showed that the M.S.S. consisted of 6 factors and its total variance was 50.18%. The 6 factors were marital satisfaction (factor 1), marital social psychological companionship (factor 2), obstacles to marriage (factor 3), dissatisfaction of marital relationship (factor 4), attitude of the reasonable marital relationship (factor 5), and cognition of married life (factor 6), 3) internal consistency reliability of the M.S.S. was 0.951 and the reliability of the total items after excluding two through item analysis 0.956 and 0.949 respectively, which showed a high internal consistency 4) The marital satisfaction examined by the M.S.S showed significant differences according to sex, education , income, the duration of marriage, the number of children but no significant differences according to age, and family type. From these results, it will be concluded that the M.S.S is a reliable and valid psychological scale for examining marital satisfaction of Korean couples. The limitations of this study were as follows. 1) It can not be generalized to all Korean couples because the subjects was sampled from Seoul or satellite cities. 2)The factor analysis in this study was oriented toward combining factors proper to theory. However, it was very difficult to find out the factors because the components of the M.S.S. was more or less abstract. Thus, from these results some suggestions follow for developing the marital satisfaction scale proper to Korean couples systematically and scientifically. 1) The subjects must be sampled form urban as well as rural areas 2)Factor analysis in this study is oriented toward finding out factors of the M.S.S. Thus, it is needed to analyze the factor validity or construct validity by multitrait - multimethod of the scale with more theoretical conceptualization. 3) It is necessary to examine whether marital satisfaction shows difference according to couples and psychological variables besides objective demographic variables. 4) More research is needed before the M.S.S. con be adapted into a turely useful marital satisfaction scale for Korea.