Partner Communication Scale (Milhausen et al., 2007)
- Populations: African American female adolescent population, Brazilian female adolescents
- Age ranges: 14-21
- Languages: English, Brazilian Portuguese
- Countries: Brazil; United States
Items
Subscales:
- Pregnancy
- STD
- HIV / AIDS
- Condom Use
- Partner’s Sex History
Item Stem: During the past 6 months, how many times have you and your sex partner discussed...
- how to prevent pregnancy
- how to use condoms
- how to prevent the AIDS virus
- how to prevent STDs
- your partner’s sex history
Responses:
Items used a 4 point Likert-type scale: 0 (Never), 1 (Sometimes/1 to 3 times), 2 (Often/ 4 to 6 times), and 3 (A lot/7 or more times)
Scoring
All items were coded so that higher values indicated more frequent sexual communication
“All items are coded so that higher values indicate more frequent sexual communication. Scores on the five items are summed to create a scale score. Scores range from 0 to 15. The mean score for participants in Study 1 was 8.47 (SD = 4.31, N = 522); in Study 2 the mean score was 7.59 (SD = 5.04, N = 243). In Study 3, the mean score was 6.46 (SD = 4.32, N = 715; Milhausen et al., 2007).” (Milhausen, Sales, & DiClemente, 2020)
“Regarding the score, this can range from 4 to 20 points. In this study, in order to facilitate statistical analyses, the scores were transformed from 0 to 100.” (Gubert et al., 2013)
Citations
- Robin R.MilhausenPhD, Jessica McDermottSalesPhD, Gina M.WingoodScD, MPH, Ralph J.DiclementePhD, Laura F.SalazarPhD & Richard A.CrosbyPhD (2007) Validation of a Partner Sexual Communication Scale for Use in HIV/AIDS Prevention Interventions, Journal of HIV/AIDS Prevention in Children & Youth, 8:1, 11-33, DOI: 10.1300/J499v08n01_02
- Milhausen, R. R., Sales, J. M., DiClemente, R. J. (2020). Partner Communication Scale. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (230-232). Routledge.
Brazilian Portuguese
- Gubert, F. d. A., Vieira, N. F. C., Pinheiro, Patrícia Neyva da Costa, Oriá, M. O. B., Ferreira, A. G. N., & Arcanjo, G. V. (2013). Tradução e validação da escala partner communication scale – versão brasileira com adolescentes do sexo feminino. Revista Da Escola De Enfermagem Da U S P, 47(4), 822-829. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0080-623420130000400008
Scoring breakdown
Measure development
- Significant design input from young people
- Cognitive interviews with young people
- Expert input
Validity
- Green: Face validity
- Green: Convergent validity
- Green: Construct validity
Reliability
- Green: Internal consistency
- Green: Test-retest
Ease of use
- Green: Readability
Definitions
Face validity: How well a measure appears to represent the construct it is supposed to be measuring.
Convergent validity: How well a measure correlates with other hypothetically-related measures.
Construct validity: The extent to which a measure reflects the construct it was designed to evaluate.
Internal consistency: The extent to which items in a scale capture aspects of the same construct.
Test-retest: The degree to which measurement scores are consistent over a short period of time (usually 2 weeks).
Readability: The ease with which a reader can understand the questionnaire items.
Key
- Green: Meets validation criteria
- Red: Does not meet validation criteria
- Unknown: Evidence not available
