THE POLISH ADAPTATION OF THE BRIEF MEASURE OF RELATIONSHIP IMPORTANCE

Abstract

"This paper presents the procedure of the Polish adaptation of the Brief Measure of Relationship Importance (BMRI; Watkins & Beckmeyer, 2020) designed to assess young adults’ beliefs about the values and costs of being in romantic relationships. The adaptation of the BMRI involved the following steps: 1) the translation of the original BMRI into the Polish language by three independent translators and the back-translation by three other independent translators; 2) the assessment of the equivalence of the Polish translation of BMRI in a study involving a sample of 38 bilingual university students and 3) the pilot study performed in a sample of 192 participants (144 women and 48 men aged 18-53 with a mean age of 26.35). The performed analyses provided evidence for the two-factor structure of the Polish BMRI with two factors – relationship desire and relationship dismissal (CFI = .94; TLI = .91, SRMR = .04; RMSEA = .10 [90% CI; .07, .14]), and satisfactory internal consistency of both subscales assessed using McDonald’s omega (.71 for relationship desire and .82 for relationship dismissal). No gender differences were observed in regard to relationship desire, F(1,190) = 0.51, p = .476 and relationship dismissal, F(1,190) = 3.13, p = .079. Furthermore, differences emerged between single and coupled individuals in the domain of relationship desire, F(1,190) = 64.73, p < .001 with single individuals reporting lower relationship desire than coupled individuals; and in the domain of relationship dismissal, F(1,190) = 57.43, p < .001 with single individuals reported higher relationship dismissal. In conclusion, the Polish version of the BMRI is a reliable measure of adult people’s romantic relationship attitudes, which requires further assessment."