Construction and Validation of the Marital Justice Scale: Adaptation of Social Justice Theory in Marriage
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Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to construct and validate a scale for measuring marital justice. A sample of three hundred and four voluntary and unpaid married participants (194 females, 110 males), aged between 20 and 35 years old (29.01 ± 4.44 years), were selected randomly through multi-stage sampling in Isfahan, Iran; the participants included in this sample had preschool child/children, were all in the first decade of marriage, and had at least eight grades of education. All participants were asked to complete the Marital Justice Scale (MJS), the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (R-DAS; Busby, Christensen, Crane, & Larson, 1995), and the Marital Conflict Questionnaire (MCQ; Sanai Zaker, 2000). The exploratory factor analysis extracted two factors labelled ‘Procedural/interactional justice’ (twelve items) and ‘Distributive justice’ (eight items) which accounted for 66.70% of the total variance. The convergent and discriminant validity of the 20-item MJS were supported by an expected pattern of correlations between the scale and the measures of marital quality and marital conflict. All correlation coefficients between the mean scores of the MJS and the scores of the RDAS and the MCQ were statistically significant. The obtained internal consistency was markedly high (Cronbach’s α = .97). The test-retest reliability of the MJS was .87. The results suggest that the MJS is a reliable and valid measure; however, further studies should be carried out in other countries, based on different age groups and socio-economic levels, various developmental stages of family life cycles, diverse cultures and sub-cultures, and according to gender difference so as to validate the MJS.