Design and Psychometrics of Tools for Measuring the Consequences of Virtual Social Networks on Married Life

Background and Objec ti ve: Couples’ communica ti on interac ti ons in the context of social networks have been challenged. The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity and reliability of a tool for measuring the consequences of virtual social media on marital life by factor analysis. Materials and Methods: This tool is a qualita ti ve methodology based on the explora ti on of views and percep ti ons of married men and women about the consequences of virtual social networks on married life. The validity of the ques ti onnaire was assessed through face validity (qualita ti ve and quan ti ta ti ve), content validity (qualita ti ve and quan ti ta ti ve) and construct validity (exploratory and con fi rmatory factor analysis) in 700 married individuals. The reliability of the ques ti onnaire was determined by the test-retest method (calcula ti on of intra-class correla ti on coe ffi cient) and internal correla ti on (calcula ti on of Cronbach-alpha coe ffi cient). Sta ti s ti cal analysis was performed by SPSS24 and AMOS24 so ft ware. Results: The ini ti al instrument consisted of 20 items from a qualita ti ve study, which a ft er psychometrics, 4 items were removed and 12 items remained. The range of values calculated for the ra ti o and content validity index of the items were (0.83-1) and (0.66-1), respec ti vely, and the impact score of all of them was h igher than 1.5. The Intra-class correla ti on coe ffi cient and Cronbach’s alpha coe ffi cient of the ques ti onnaire were obtained at 0.864 and 785, respec ti vely. The results of exploratory factor analysis were four factors: «Threat of marital commitment», “individualiza ti on of cohabita ti on”,” Threat to privacy” and “Faded in ti macy”. In con fi rmatory factor analysis the fi tt ed model based on these four factors explained 43.75% of the consequences of social media presence on couples› lifestyle. Conclusion: Psychometric results in this study showed that a tool with 20- iteme and 4 domains for measuring the consequences of social media presence on couples’ lifestyles has good validity and reliability and it can be used as a suitable tool in this fi eld.