Development and Validation of the Marital Attitude Scale

Abstract This article reports the development and validation of a scale to measure attitudes toward marriage, the Marital Attitude Scale (MAS). The MAS assesses global satisfaction toward heterosexual marriage. The MAS is shown to have favorable psychometric properties, including high internal consistency. Scores on the MAS correlate moderately with other measures of marital attitudes and discriminate predictably with specific personality characteristics. The MAS is suited for use with persons who are, or are not, married.