Abstract
Pilot work and three studies detail the development of the `Perceptions of Love and Sex Scale,' a measure of how people view the link between love and sex in their romantic relationships. College students generated descriptive responses to a query about the connections between love and sex in their romantic relationships. Twenty-seven themes were distilled into item format. In Study 1, these items and other relationship measures were administered to 348 participants. Five subscales were extracted from the 27 items, using principal components analyses. In Study 11, a revised scale and other relationship measures were completed by 274 participants, with results replicated in Study Ill (N = 299). Samples from Studies 11 and Ill were combined for a variety of analyses, including confirmatory factor analyses, correlations, hierarchical regression analyses, and sex comparisons. The final version of the scale yielded 17 items on four subscales (Love is Most Important, Sex Demonstrates Love, Love Comes Before Sex, and Sex is Declining) with acceptable psycho- metric properties and expected correlations with measures of other relationship constructs. This research demonstrates the utility of studying romantic love and sexual expression as linked constructs, rather than as separate, isolated domains of scholarly inquiry.
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