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Distinguishing the Correlates of Being Mindfully vs. Mindlessly Coupled: Development and Validation of the Attentive Awareness in Relationships Scale (AAIRS)

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Abstract

Objectives

The current study developed a psychometrically optimized measure of mindful attentive relationship awareness.

Methods

Items of existing scales (e.g., the Relationship Awareness Scale; RAS; the Relationship Mindfulness Measure; RMM) were combined with items written by the authors to create a pool of 54 items given to online samples of 2109 and 1752 participants. Using correlational analyses and item response theory, we developed the Attentive Awareness in Relationships Scale (AAIRS).

Results

Results suggested that the AAIS measures the construct of relationship awareness comprised of two distinct facets: attentive awareness and inattention/distraction. The AAIRS demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity with existing measures (e.g., relationship communication/talk, trait mindfulness) and offered researchers higher precision and power for detecting differences among individuals. The AAIRS demonstrated adequate internal consistency across a wide range of demographic subgroups and displayed strict measurement invariance across genders, relationship stages, and current meditation frequencies. Bifactor analyses highlighted that the subscales of the AAIRS shared a large proportion of common variance, supporting the use of a total score to represent mindful attentive relationship awareness. However, the bifactor analyses also revealed unique variance associated with each subscale, and longitudinal analyses suggested that those facets of relationship awareness changed fairly independently across time and were both uniquely linked to corresponding change in relationship satisfaction, suggesting the possibility that each of the AAIRS subscales might also contribute novel explanatory variance (i.e., incremental validity).

Conclusions

The AAIRS offers researchers and clinicians a psychometrically-optimized tool for assessing the construct of relationship awareness.

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Data Availability

All study materials and data are available upon request at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/kxj98/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Rochester, RC Box 270266, Rochester, NY, 14627-0266, USA

    Jennifer S. Daks & Ronald D. Rogge

  2. Department of Family and Child Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

    Frank D. Fincham

Authors
  1. Jennifer S. Daks
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  2. Ronald D. Rogge
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  3. Frank D. Fincham
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Contributions

JD and RR developed the study concept together and collaborated on the study design, IRB approval, online implementation, and recruitment of the sample. FF helped collect data from another university to diversify the sample. JD and RR performed the data analyses together and JD drafted the manuscript. All authors provided critical revisions, approved the final version of the manuscript for submission, and are responsible for its content. All authors agree to the order of authorship.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ronald D. Rogge.

Ethics declarations

The studies and all of their materials were evaluated and approved by the University of Rochester’s IRB, and the study was conducted following those ethical guidelines. Informed consent was obtained on the first webpage of the survey via an information letter. IRB materials for the study have been made available at (https://osf.io/kxj98/), and data is available there upon request.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Daks, J.S., Rogge, R.D. & Fincham, F.D. Distinguishing the Correlates of Being Mindfully vs. Mindlessly Coupled: Development and Validation of the Attentive Awareness in Relationships Scale (AAIRS). Mindfulness 12, 1361–1376 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01604-w

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