Attitude towards Child Marriage: Scale Development and Validation

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Kadhiravan S, Madalaimuthu A

Abstract

Child marriage refers to any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child. The cause of child marriage is deeply rooted in the structure and culture of the society. The aim of this study is to develop and validate an instrument to assess the attitude of Tamil youth towards child marriage. The draft scale consisted of 25 items measuring four different aspects such as sexual belief, economic benefits, social structure and culture. The items were subjected to expert opinion for content validity and modified accordingly with three dimensions.  The study was carried out among college students (N=108) through an online survey. KMO sampling adequacy was found to be 0.879 and Bartlett’s Test was significant (chi-square = 744.583, df=136, p<0.001) and exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine the construct validity of the scale. The results of the principal component analysis using varimax rotation indicated that three factors explained 55.96% of the total variance with factor loading values ranging between 0.426 and 0.856.  Cronbach coefficient for the total of the 17-item scale under three factors was calculated with Cronbach ⍺ as 0.901.

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