Development and Validation of the Romantic Competence Inventory for College Students

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the Romantic Competence Inventory ofcollege students in Korea. The Romantic Competence Inventory(RCI) is a self-report measuredesigned to assess competence in the romantic relationships of college students. During the initialdevelopment phase, the preliminary 100 items were constructed through literature review and a pilotsurvey on the perceived romantic competence of 89 college students. Through expert review, 93items were selected for the main survey. Three-hundred and seventy-one college students participatedin the main survey. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analyses andreliability analyses. The major findings of this study were as follows: First, a final set of 32Likert-style items were selected for the Romantic Competence Inventory of college students. The RCIconsisted of 4 subscales including self-efficacy for romantic relationship, relational maintenancebehaviors, conflict management behaviors, and overcoming relationship anxiety. Second, the contentvalidity of the RCI was supported by a group of experts and good construct validity wasdemonstrated using exploratory factor analyses. Also, high internal consistency, retest reliability andsplit-half reliability of the RCI were demonstrated using reliability statistics.