Development of Early Marriage Attitude Scale: A Multi-Dimensional Scale for Measuring the Attitudes Toward Child Marriage

Abstract

Child marriage can cause lifetime disadvantage and deprivation for female adolescents; however, it is still widespread in developing countries. Evaluation of female adolescents’ attitudes toward child marriage is vital to design adequate prevention programs. The aim of the study was to develop a self-administered scale to measure female adolescents’ attitudes toward child marriage in Malaysia. The scale items were created and refined through four stages: item pool generation, expert review, translations, and pretesting. A pretest was conducted with 30 female adolescents in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to check for understandability of the language, and responses were analyzed. The scale was tested for face and content validities during the expert review process. Forty items were obtained in seven constructs as follows: (a) intuitive decision making, (b) believing in fate, (c) parental economic hardship during adolescence, (d) spiritual belief, (e) social norms, (f) opinion about premarital sex, and (g) relationship with parents/guardians. The results of the pretest proved the comprehensiveness of the items. Early Marriage Attitude Scale (EMAS) was developed to assess female adolescents’ attitudes toward child marriage in Malaysia. The EMAS demonstrated face and content validities and is ready to be tested for further validation among Malaysian adolescents.