Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to adapt covenant / contract marriage values scale (Marital VOWS) developed by Ripley, Worthington, Bromley and Kemper (2005) into Turkish on a group of university students. In order to test the language equivalence of the scale, translations were applied mutually (English-Turkish, Turkish-English) to the students in the English language teaching department. Positive and significant correlations were found between the scores obtained from English and Turkish forms. Pilot study was conducted by applying 50 Turkish draft forms which passed the linguistic equivalence test. After the pilot study, it is found that there is no item below .30 of total item correlation coefficient. Exploratory Factor Analyses and Confirmatory Factor Analyses were carried out for the validity analyses. On the other hand, Internal Consistency Coefficient was calculated for reliability analyses. The validity and reliability studies of the scale were surveyed on 457 people. The marriage values scale is a 26-items that have two options. According to the results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyzes applied to determine the factor structure of Marital Values (VOWS); it has one dimensional structure. The scale corresponds to the original state. For Marital Values (VOWS), the item factor loadings for each item range from .40 to .70. As a result of the factor analysis made, the scale revealed 40.42% of the total variance. According to the results, the hypothesized model has substantially good fit indices. The Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found as .87. The findings indicated that Marital Values (Vows) can be used as a valid and reliable instrument. Hence this adapted scale is suitable for academic studies related to marital values, covenantal and contractual culture.

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