Abstract

Background: Seven destructive habits are the basic behaviors of psychological external control that destroy the relationship and consequently they often cause problems that humans engage with. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to construct and validate a scale that could evaluate the seven destructive behaviors of marriage based on William Glaser's Choice Theory. Method: By studying the theoretical foundations of choice theory in the field of seven destructive behaviors in marriage, and related research, a questionnaire was developed based on the above constructs which were obtained from the study of available resources. After reviewing the formal and content validity of this scale and each of its factors, and removing irrelevant questions, 68 questions were left for the final analysis. The questionnaire was conducted on a sample of 250 people (213 women and 37 men) from married university students. To verify the reliability of this scale, the internal consistency of Cronbach's alpha was used. The validity of the questionnaire was evaluated in three ways: construct validity (factor analysis), criterion validity (concurrent validity) and content validity. Results: Factor analysis using the main component method and direct ablimin rotation showed that 7 factors determined 58.998% of total variance. The reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated using the Cronbach's alpha coefficient and it had been determined for the whole scale as 0.95, for the first factor as 0.88, for the second factor as 0.76, for the third factor as 0.78, for the fourth factor as 0.83, for the fifth factor as 0.86, for the sixth factor as 0.82 and for the seventh factor as 0.71. The simultaneous validity of the scale was achieved through the correlation of this scale with the subset of "Four Horsemen of the apocalypse" from John Gutman's Scale Collection (SRH) which was 0.567. Discussion and Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that the questionnaire has the necessary validity and reliability, and since there is no scale to assess destructive behaviors in marital relations based on choice theory, this questionnaire to some extent can fill the gap in research in this area and be it can be used by psychotherapists and specialists in the field.