Development and validation of cohabitation intentions scale (CIS)

Abstract

AbstractThe relationship between attitudes and behaviour is largely defined by intentions. The stronger the intention to engage in a behaviour, the greater the likelihood that attitudes will predict that behaviour. In order to predict cohabitation behaviour, both cohabitation attitudes and intentions must be measured. However, to the best of our knowledge, there appears to be a lack of standardized instruments that measure cohabitation intentions and only a few that measure cohabitation attitudes. We therefore set out to develop and validate a Cohabitation Intentions Scale (CIS) in Ghana. The CIS was developed and validated with an existing Cohabitation Attitudes Scale (CAS). The validation process was conducted in two phases: phase I with 226 respondents and phase II with 245 respondents, both from one of the public universities in Ghana. The phase I results necessitated changes to the wording of three items in the CAS and modifications to the rating scales for both the CIS and the CAS. The final instruments contained six items each which were rated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Overall, the CIS and the CAS were found to be highly reliable and valid instruments in the Ghanaian context. These findings suggest that the new CIS can be used to measure cohabitation intentions alongside the CAS which measures cohabitation attitudes, and may predict future cohabitation behaviour.

Keywords

• Cohabitation
• attitudes
• intentions
• instrument development
• Ghana
• Daryl O’Connor, University of Leeds, United Kingdom