Psychometric properties on a romantic love myths scale: The case of the myths, fallacies and erroneous beliefs about the ideal of romantic love scale

Abstract

Understanding the construct of romantic love is an important task in societies all around the world. However, instruments designed to assess this construct are scarce and most of them were developed more than a decade ago. De la Pena, Ramos, Luzon, and Recio (2011) proposed the Myths, Fallacies and Erroneous Beliefs about the Ideal of Romantic Love Scale. In this current study we provide the psychometric properties of this scale in a representative sample of adolescents. The analytic strategy included both Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. We achieved a best-factor structure using a unidimensional model of romantic beliefs which also had an adequate estimated reliability. In agreement with descriptions in the existing academic literature, the resulting romantic beliefs factor was significantly related to hostile and benevolent sexism, although slightly less so in the latter case. Finally, differential validity was examined using ‘gender’ and ‘having a partner’ as independent variables; the differences in romantic beliefs according to these variables also agreed with previous reports in the literature. We provide a thorough discussion of our results and highlight the implications of our findings for clinical practice.