Examining the relationships between negative relationship maintenance strategies, equity, satisfaction and attachment in emerging adults' romantic relationships

The aim of this mixed method study is exploring emerging adults' negative relationship maintenance strategies, developing the Negative Relationship Maintenance Strategies Scale, adapting the Relational Equity Scale, and examining relationships between relationship maintenance strategies, demographic variables, equity, satisfaction, and attachment. Confirmatory factor analysis of the Relational Equity Scale, showed that the one-dimensional structure has a good fit. For the criterion validity, correlations between the Relational Equity Scale and the Relationship Assessment Scale were examined. Its reliability was examined by calculating the Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient. In order to discover the relationship maintenance strategies of emerging adults' data were collected with semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaire forms. The data analyzed with content analysis. It was discovered that emerging adults' negative relationship maintenance strategies were gathered in 6 categories. These categories are; privacy violation and domination, stonewalling/withdrawal, avoidance behaviors, submission to control and self-compromise, destructive behaviors and manipulative behaviors. The construct validity of the Negative Relationship Maintenance Strategies Scale was tested with principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that the 6-dimensional structure has acceptable fit. The dimensions of the scale were named as destructive behaviors, infidelity, control behaviors, self-compromise, avoidance and manipulation. For the criterion validity, correlations between the dimensions of the Negative Relationship Maintenance Scale were examined and its reliability was examined with Cronbach's Alpha internal consistency coefficient and test-retest method. In order to determine whether the scores obtained from the sub-dimensions of the Negative Relationship Maintenance Strategies Scale differed according to demographic variables was examined using t-test, Mann Whitney-U, one-way ANOVA and Kruskal Wallis-H tests. The relationships between the scale dimensions and equity, satisfaction and attachment were examined using Pearson and Spearman Brown Rank Difference correlation coefficients. The findings obtained from the study were discussed in the light of the literature.