The Scale for Emotional Reactions Following the

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 786 – 790

3rd World Conference on Psychology, Counselling and Guidance (WCPCG-2012)

The Scale for Emotional Reactions Following the Breakup K. Funda Barutcu a* a

Capa Aydin a

Middle East Technical University, Ankara,06800, Turkey

Abstract The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a scale which measures the emotional reactions following the breakup of a non-marital relationship. A scale including 20 items was developed and administered to a sample consisting of 101 university students who broke their romantic relationship within the past two years. Findings of Exploratory Factor Analysis indicated twofactor structure and these factors were named as emotions emanated from self and emotions emanated from the partner. For the for two factors were found as .93 and .85, respectively. To conclude, the scale reliab was found as reliable and valid instrument in measuring the emotional reactions following the breakup. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. © 2013 Published by Elsevierunder Ltd. Selection and peer reviewDr. under the responsibility HalatDemirok, Near East University, Cyprus Selection and peer-review responsibility of Prof. Huseyin Uzunboyluof&Dr. Dr.Melehat Mukaddes Keywords: Emotion, breakup, scale development.

1. Introduction To be in a close relationship is one of the most basic human needs and this need leads people to form and maintain important interpersonal relationships (Baumeister& Leary, 1995; Degenova, 2008). People engage in a relationship in order to fulfill their belongings need. Maintenance of the relationship is important as well as its formation; once people form social bonds, they do not want to break them. Positive bonds yield positive results; whereas breakups of these bonds lead to negative outcomes (Hendrick, 2004). Romantic relationships are ways of social connections and also very important for most people (Leone & Hawkins, 2006). Romantic relationships yield a unique set of challenges that includes the breakup experience (Alexander, 2008). Robak and Weitzman (1998) stated that breakup is common especially in adolescence and young adulthood. Breakup is a painful experience. Following the breakup, emotional reactions differ from people to people (Perilloux & Buss, 2008), and they often lead to mental and psychological disorders (Hill, Rubin, & Peplau, 1976; Sprecher, Felmlee, Metts, Fehr, & Vanni, 1998; Tashiro & Frazier, 2003). After the dissolution of a romantic relationship, people enter into a breakup adjustment period. Breakup adjustment is a multidimensional construct (Fisher, 1976). It includes behavioral, cognitive and emotional components (Fisher, 1976).This study focuses on the emotional component of the breakup adjustment. The purpose of the study was to develop and validate a scale which measures the emotional reactions following the breakup of non-marital relationships. This study is significant because in the literature a brief, reliable and valid instrument that directly measures the emotional reactions following the breakup was not found for non-marital sample. There were studies that deal with emotional reactions following the breakup but they did not directly measure the emotional reactions with a reliable

Corresponding author name: * K. Funda

-312-210-7168

E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Uzunboylu & Dr. Mukaddes Demirok, Near East University, Cyprus doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.06.647

K. Funda Barutcu and Yeşim Capa Aydin / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 84 (2013) 786 – 790

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and valid instrument. One of the studies related to emotional experiences following the breakup was conducted by Sprecher (1994). She examined the emotional reactions of 47 young adult couples as a part of her study. Participants were provided a list of emotions consisted of both negative and positive emotions in a 7-point response scale (1= not at all; 4= somewhat; 7= extremely) for the degree of emotions. Reported negative emotions were more than the positive emotions and many participants reported distress following the breakup. Among the negative emotions, hurt, frustration, depression, loneliness, and anger were the most mentioned ones. In addition, love and relief were the positive emotions mostly experienced by participants. In another study carried out by McCarthy, Lambert, and Brack (1997), participants were provided event examples related to breakup and they were asked to identify the emotions related to this event. In order to measure the intensity of the emotions, a 10-point response scale from 0 (not at all) to 9 (very intense) was set. In this study, 231 master students reported both positive and negative emotional responses following the breakup of romantic relationships. Joy, relief, pride, and hope were the positive emotions; disgust, unfriendliness, anger, frustration, and contempt were the negative emotions mentioned by the participants. Moreover, Sbarra and Emery (2005) examined the emotional sequelae of non-marital relationship dissolution with a sample consisting of 58 young adults. They used diary measures to follow the emotional state of the participants for 28 days. The daily diary measures the affective states of love, sadness, anger, and relief. The participants reported more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions. Perilloux and Buss (2008) examined various aspects of breakup such as costs and coping strategies. Emotional reactions following the breakup are one of these aspects. For their study, the researcher designed a new instrument but this instrument did not directly measure the emotional reactions. Their study results indicated that people experience sadness, anger, confusion, shock, vengeance, happiness, indifference, jealousy, scare, guilt, remorse, and regret in varying degrees. To sum up, emotional reactions following the breakup were examined as a part of breakup adjustment scales in the literature or they are measured by diaries and emotion lists. Different emotional reactions mentioned in different researches were gathered together and a brief scale which directly and solely measures the emotional reactions following the breakup was constructed for this study. 2. Method 2.1. Participants The target population of the study was university students who dissolve their non-marital romantic relationship within the last two years in Turkey. The accessible population of the study was students from a university from the central region of Turkey. Participants were recruited from different departments by using convenience sampling method. The university - age sample was purposefully selected. In early adolescence, romantic relationships are less intense, short in duration and casual (Feiring, 1996), but at university ages, individuals started to form meaningful relationships (Saffrey & Ehrenberg, 2007) and their relationship contains more trust, support, and stability when compared with the early adolescent relationship (Shulman & Kipnis, 2001). In late adulthood, romantic relationships generally take the form of marriage which is not in the scope of the present study. For those reasons, the university aged sample was selected to investigate the adjustment to break up of non-marital romantic relationships. Out of 101 voluntary participants who separated from their romantic relationship partner within the last two years, 62 (61.4%) of them were female, 38 male (37.6%), and 1 participant did not report gender. The age of the participants varied between 18 and 30 (M = 22.76, SD = 3.13). Participants were from 41 different departments. Twenty seven (26.7%) of the participants were from the Faculty of Engineering; 26 (25.7%) of them from the Faculty of Education; 25 (24.8%) of them from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences; 7 (6.9%) of them from Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences; and 2 (2%) of them from the Faculty of Architecture. Fourteen (13.9%) of the participants did not specify their departments. The average duration of the broken relationship was 17.32 months (SD = 19.33); an average of 8.49 months (SD= 6.73) elapsed after breakup. Forty one (40.6 %) of the participants initiated the breakup themselves. Thirty five

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(34.7%) of the participants initiated to break up with their partners. 25 (24.8%) of the participants reported that their partner initiated to break up. 2.2. Instrument development In this study, The Scale for Emotional Reactions Following the Breakup was developed considering the steps proposed by DeVellis (2003). These steps were determining the content of the scale, generating an item pool, determining the format, taking expert opinion, validating the items, administering the items to a developmental sample, evaluating the items, and optimizing the scale length. To begin with, the studies related to the non-marital romantic relationship breakup was reviewed. People enter into an adjustment period, after they separate from their romantic relationship partner. Breakup adjustment is a broad multidimensional construct (Fisher, 1976). Emotional reactions are considered as one dimension of adjustment to break up (Fisher, 1976). In order to examine this dimension in more detail, the content of this instrument was determined as emotional reactions following the breakup. In order to generate an item pool, emotions that can possibly emerge following the breakup were listed by considering previous research studies. Then, by using these emotion words, 33 items were written in a sentence format (i.e., Although our relationship was over, I am jealous of her/him. For the response format, a 5-point scale was chosen. In this scale 1 corresponded to never; 2 to a little bit, 3 to moderate; 4 to quite a bit; and 5 to a great deal. This response format was chosen because including labels on all scale points clarify the meaning of scale points and it provides more precise report (Krosnick & Fabrigar, 1997). The items were reviewed by three experts and three doctorate students in Educational Sciences Department. Two of the experts were from Psychological Counseling and Guidance Program and one of them is from Educational Measurement and Evaluation Program. Experts from Psychological Counseling and Guidance Program specified the items which reflect the direct emotional reactions. After this specification, the number of items reduced from 33 to 20 because 13 items that included indirect emotions, cognitions, and meta-mood were eliminated. Three items that included indirect emotions were rewritten and indirect emotions were converted to direct emotions. Besides the content of the items, experts gave directions related to wording of the sentences. Some items specified the emotions I feel very weak because the items were rated by the participants on a scale. The expert in the field of measurement and evaluation gave suggestions about the format and appearance of the scale. Necessary correction and arrangements were done by considering these suggestions. These reviews contributed to both face and content validity of the instrument. After the scale was revised by considering expert opinions, a cognitive interview was done with a student in the same university. The interviewee reported that items were short and simple so they can be easily read; the font style was nice; and the format of the scale was good. She said that the scale covered the all possible basic emotions following the breakup. Before administering the scale to a developmental sample, the scale was controlled once more in terms of its content, wording, punctuation, spacing, and general appearance. The controlled version of the scale included two sections. The first section included 6 items. Three of these items were related to demographic information of the participants (gender, age, and department) and the other 3 items were related to demographic information of the broken relationship (duration of the relationship, elapsed time after the breakup, and initiator of the breakup). The second section included 20 items related to emotional reactions following the breakup. A 5-point scale ranging from never (1) to a great deal (5) was provided for the responses. 2.3. Data analysis The factor structure of the scale was examined by conducting exploratory factor analysis. Reliability of the each Factor analysis and reliability analysis were administered by using SPSS 15. Prior to the analysis, the data were checked in order to identify the erroneous entries. Minimum and maximum values, frequencies of variables were skimmed and erroneous entries were not


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found. Three items (Item 13, 17 and 20) which included positive emotions when compared to other emotions were reversed. 3. Results Initially, assumptions of the exploratory factor analysis were checked. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy was found as .87, which met the criteria of being greater than .60 (Hair, Anderson, Tatham, & 2 Black, 2006). (190) =1285.07, p=.00) and this indicated that item correlation matrix was significantly different from the identity matrix. After the assumption check, exploratory factor analysis was conducted. The scree plot showed three factors. However, two-factor structure explaining the 58.17% of the variance in emotional reactions following the breakup was more interpretable. The first factor, named as emotions emanated from the self, includes15 items (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20) and the factor loading of these items range from .38 to .88. The second factor, named as emotions emanated from the partner, includes 5 items (2, 6, 10, 14, and 16) and the factor loading of these items range from .44 to .88. found as .93 and .85, respectively. include I feel unhappy I feel helpless I feel angry with her/him because of upsetting me I feel downtrodden 4. Discussion The purpose of the study was to develop and validate a scale that measures emotional reactions following the breakup. Based on the literature review, 33 items were constructed. Content of the scale was examined by the experts and items were revised by considering these examination. The experts validated the content of the scale. The final version of the scale that includes 20 items was administered to 101 university students who broke their relationship within the past two years. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted. Two factor structures were found and named as emotions emanated from the self and emotions emanated from the partner. In the literature, emotions following the breakup were generally grouped as positive and negative emotions (i.e. McCarthy, Lambert, & Brack, 1997; Sprecher, 1994), but in this study emotions were grouped according to the source. Regarding the reliability, reliability coefficients were found as .93 for emotions emanated from the self and .85 for emotions emanated from the partner. It can be inferred that for this sample the scale provides reliable scores. The factor structure and reliability coefficients can be changed for different samples. For this reason replications of this study are recommended with larger samples in order to increase the evidences of for the reliability and validity of this scale score. When considering the practical implications of the scale, it is brief but encompasses a variety of possible emotions. Cognitions, reasons and indirect emotions were not included. It directly measures the emotions. It is reader friendly and can be applied in a short time to numerous participants. References Alexander, A. L. (2008). Relationship resources for coping with unfulfilled standards in dating relationships: Commitment, satisfaction, and closeness. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25,725-747. Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachment as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529. Degenova, M. K. (2008). Intimate Relationships, Marriages and Families. (7th ed.).New York: McGraw-Hill, (Chapter 4). DeVellis, R. F. (2003). Scale development: Theory and applications. (2nd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage, (Chapter 5). Feiring, C. (1996).Concept of romance in 15 year-old adolescents. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 6,181-200. Fisher, B. F. (1976). Identifying and meeting needs of formerly-married people through a divorce adjustment seminar. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Northern, Colorado. Hair, J. F., Anderson, R. E., Tatham, R. L., & Black, W. C. (2006). Multivariate data analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, (Chapter 3).

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