Development and Validation of the In-Laws Support Scale in the Indian Context

Description

Page: 1350-1356

Aparajita Chakraborty¹ and Atanu Kumar Dogra² (Department of Psychology, Amity University, Kolkata, West Bengal¹ and Department of Psychology, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal²)

The role of In-laws is crucial in marriage, especially in Indian culture, where togetherness is celebrated and promoted. The purpose of the present study was to develop a scale for measuring the nature of support and challenges experienced by married couples from their in-laws within the Indian sociocultural context. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 45 items across five domains using a five-point Likert scale. The scale underwent expert relevance judgment (based on item validity index) and item validation (based on item-domain total correlations). Data were collected from 200 urban married individuals (100 staying with in-laws and 100 not staying) residing in West Bengal, India, using the snowball sampling technique. The S-CVI result (0.81) indicated high content validity for the scale. Exploratory factor analysis yielded five factors-Emotional and Day-to-Day Support, Boundaries and Interference, Negative Interactions, Relationship Support and Inclusion, and Respect for Independence-based on eigenvalues above 1.0 and factor loadings above 0.33. This structure was validated through confirmatory factor analysis, which demonstrated acceptable model fit indices (CFI = 0.924, RMSEA = 0.038, SRMR = 0.064). Internal consistency for the subscales ranged from 0.70 to 0.88. Clinical validation through independent sample t-tests showed significant differences (p < .01) in all five domains between participants living with in-laws and those not, supporting the tool’s discriminant validity. The scale serves as a culturally sensitive psychometric tool to assess both supportive and conflictual aspects of in-law relationships, contributing to marital health assessment and informing family therapy interventions in collectivist cultures.