Abstract
Getting married at an early age is a social norm far members of the Latter-day Saint (LDS) faith. To our knowledge there are no published studies of marriage desperation in that culture. The goal of our study was to develop an instrument for reliably and validly measuring marriage desperation, which we operationally defined as the frequency of contemplating marriage as well as other actions likely to result in getting married. The Marriage Desperation Scale (MDS) consists of 10 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale. The MDS was administered to a convenience sample of 166 single LDS participants via an online-survey site. The MDS had moderate internal consistency~= 0. 67). Two items had validity coefficients of 0. 7 6 and 0. 68 and two others 0.52.A factor analysis revealed three factors, but it was difficult to discriminate between them. U-e offer suggestions far improving the MDS far future use in research including more domain specific questions and a more experienced panel of experts. The MDS is neither a reliable nor a valid way of measuring marriage desperation.
Recommended Citation
(2012)
"Twenty-one and Single!?: Marriage Desperation Among Single BYU Students,"
Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology: Vol. 9:
Iss.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/intuition/vol9/iss1/2