Translation, cultural adaptation, and content validity index of the Juvenile Love Scale to the Brazilian context

Abstract

Background: Passionate love involves physiological, emotional, and cognitive features that greatly changes behavior. This phenomenon seems universal or near universal. Even other animal species choose partners. An intense state of passionate love is associated with activity in dopamine pathways of the brain ‘reward system’, and recently has been regarded as a ‘natural addiction’. Instruments or tools to evaluate romantic love during childhood is still scarce. Objective: To perform the translation and cultural adaptation of the Juvenile Love Scale (JLS) for use in the Brazilian context targeted for adolescents between 14 and 18 years old. Methods: The translation and cultural adaptation of JLS followed international recommendations, and its content validity was analyzed by a panel of experts in different areas of knowledge. Results: The final version of the JLS for use in the Brazilian context showed high content validity (> 90%). Discussion: To our knowledge, this is the first scale for measuring romantic or passionate love in adolescents adapted to the Brazilian context. This instrument is a significant contribution to the study of the dimensions of love, as well as to understand the impact of love on the psychiatric phenomena that pervade life in this stage of development.