Citation

Bardis PD. Int. Rev. Sociol. (Lucknow) 1971; 1(1): 71-77.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1971, International Journals)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Although there are myriads of definitions of love in literature, philosophy, psychology, religion, sociology, and other fields, we have no quantitative technique for the measurement of heterosexual love. Therefore, the present study was aimed at the construction of such an instrument. The method employed was the Likert scaling technique, and the survey of opinions resulted in 500 items, which were derived from three sources (the literature of various disciplines, a heterogeneous group of 350 Americans, and the author himself), and which covered 18 components of heterosexual love (respect, loyalty, moral support, empathy and sympathy, sacrifice, communication, companionship, cooperation, security, physical love, and so forth). The criterion of internal consistency gave a final scale of 50 highly discriminatory statements, with a theoretical range of scores from 0 (absence of love) to 100 (complete love). A series of statistical tests enabled the writer to state the "principle of instrumental parsimony ;" that is, "scientific instruments are not to be complicated without necessity" Four tests involving happily married persons, engaged subjects, casual dates, and broken dates established the validity of the instrument. (For all values, pl. 001. Two test-retests and three split-halves also revealed the scale's reliability (all coefficients, pl. 001). The Erotometer may be employed by researchers in order to test various hypotheses and theories regarding heterosexual love ; by counselors in order to explore more systematically an important sector of a client's life; by teachers in order to facilitate relevant discussion in class; and by individual subjects in order to ascertain the nature, extent, and development of their heterosexual love.

Language: en