Development And Application Of College Student's Romantic Relationship Competence Questionnaire

Attitude to marriage and romantic relationship is one of the key elements that are important to maintain intimate relationship and wellbeing in life.Based on foreign and domestic researches,this study proposed the concept of romantic relationship competence by referring to the term “competence” from Management Psychology.Romantic relationship competence includes all the changeable psychological traits that enable individuals to maintain intimate relationship and mainly focuses on the process of maintaining intimate relationship,excluding the establishment and end of such relationship.The psychological traits in the romantic relationship can be changed,impacted by experience,and promoted by training and cultivation.This study primarily delves into the dimensions of romantic relationship competence and analyzes the characters of such competence.There are two parts in this study:Part 1: developing College Student's Romantic Relationship Competence Questionnaire.The theoretical dimensions of this scale was initially established through literature review,interview,open-ended questionnaire and expert's evaluation.The initial questionnaire was developed through interview and open-ended questionnaire.With its construct being examined simultaneously,the questionnaire was finalized through item discrimination analysis of pre and post tests,exploratory factor analysis,and confirmatory factor analysis.There were five dimensions,i.e.trust,tolerance,support,sympathy,attachment,and 19 items in the developed scale.The psychometric properties were examined with internal consistency reliability as 0.857,split-half reliability as 0.772,and test retest reliability as 0.887.All index indicated the questionnaire was validated with satisfactory content validity and construct validity.Part 2: investigating on characters of college student's romantic relationship competence.The results of 800 college students showed that,college students possessed medium to high level romantic relationship competence and similar degree of agreement to each dimensions of such competence with level of support,trust,attachment,tolerance and sympathy in descending order.There are differences among various groups of students.Males demonstrated more trust and tolerance than females while females demonstrated more sympathy and attachment.Students majoring in Social Science had higher sympathy and attachment than students majoring in Science.Students with siblings could accompany and support their partners more and devote more to relationship than those without siblings.In terms of overall romantic relationship competence,students who had romantic relationship experiences outweighed their counterparts without relevant experiences.Students in romantic relationship had more trust and attachment and high level sympathy.Those who were not in a current relationship but had such experiences possessed more support and attachment and high level of sympathy.Comparatively,students who were in a romantic relationship demonstrated higher level of sympathy than those who were not in a current relationship but had such experiences.The differences also existed among students with various romantic relationship experiences.Specifically,romantic relationship competence in students with two such experiences was the highest while this competence in students without such experiences was the lowest.Students with two or one romantic relationship experiences showed significantly higher competence than those without such experience.Based on statement above,the findings of this study are as following:1.College Student's Romantic Relationship Competence Questionnaire has satisfactory reliability and validity.The construct of this questionnaire is psychometrically valid.It can be applied as a measurement scale.2.There are 5 dimensions,i.e.trust,tolerance,support,sympathy,attachment,and 19 items in College Student's Romantic Relationship Competence Questionnaire.3.College student's romantic relationship competence are in medium to high level.Students' agreement on 5 dimensions is similar with support,trust,attachment,tolerance and sympathy shown from the highest to lowest level.4.College student's romantic relationship competence can be affected by gender,psychological maturity,major,grownup environment,fostering approach,and romantic relationship experiences.