Adaptation and Validation of the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale in Bangla (R-DAS Bangla)

Abstract

Background: The quality of marital relationships has been demonstrated to be an important indicator of adult, couple, and child well-being. There is considerable evidence that low marital quality is a significant risk factor for developing psychiatric disorders. The gold standard Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS) is widely used to assess couple relationships and quality of marriage. Aim: The purpose of the study was to develop a culturally adapted and validated Bangla version of RDAS for Bangladeshi couples. Methods: The descriptive type of cross-sectional study was conducted in the Department of Psychiatry, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, Dhaka, during the period from July 2017 to June 2018. Total of 100 samples were taken. After taking informed consent, couple of both sex, aged > 18 were asked to complete the socio-demographic questionnaire and bangle version of RDAS. RDAS Bangla was applied by 2 raters for inter-rater reliability. Validity was assessed by content validity and factor analysis. Reliability was assessed by internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Results: Content validity was perfect as item-level content validity indexes (I-CVIs) were one except for two items and scale-level content validity index (S-CVI) was 0.90. In two factor model, no item had salient loading on more than one factor and there were no items that failed to load on either factor. Communalities were ranged from 0.39 to 0.87. Cronbach’s alpha value for R-DAS Bangla total, consensus, satisfaction and cohesion subscales were 0.85, 0.78, 0.80 and 0.62 respectively. Intra-class correlation coefficients (ICCs) for inter-rater reliability were ranged from 0.68 to 0.97 and Cohen’s kappa was 0.89. All values represented that the R-DAS Bangla was valid and reliable scale. Conclusion: RDAS Bangla is a valid, reliable and useful scale for a assessing couple relationship and quality of marriage Bangladesh context.