Development of the Russian version of Sternberg’s Love scale^*

The second version of Sternberg’s Love scale (Sternberg, 1997) was adapted to Russian by the author and 16 collaborators (including three English philologists from the Faculty of Modern Languages of Latvian University) in 2002-2005, according to the Oxford Outcomes’ procedure comparing the original version with back reconciled translation by experts. The scale was also verified by the two-month test-retest procedure on 22 undergraduate students of English philology from Latvian university. The correlation between the original and back translation questionnaires versions was 0.76 for the full scale (p ≤ .001). The scale showed positive correlations with satisfaction subscale of the Berne Subjective Well-being inventory (intimacy subscale – 0.540, passion – 0.395, commitment – 0.405) and with the 25-item Self-Report Jealousy Scale (accordingly – 0.521, 0.650, 0.584). In the Russian samples (including students enrolled in different universities of Russia) the internal consistency of the Russian version reveals the reliability of all three subscales, which ranges from 0.92 to 0.95. Factor analysis shows data structure which corresponds to Sternberg’s Love scale, although items expected to load on a particular factor do not always show their highest loading on this factor.

It is possible to apply famous words of Ebbinghaus:“Psychology has a long past but only a short history”Ebbinghaus, 1905) to the field of psychology of Love. Thinking about and non-scientific descriptions we can find from Ancient Greek texts till huge amount of psychoanalytic and esoteric speculations but a scientific study begins at the end of 1960-ies only (Rubin, 1970; 1988) despite some separate early empirical studies (Ellis, 1949; Swensen, 1961; Swensen, & Gilner, 1964).  Zick Rubin’s scale stimulated other researchers transfer to empirical studies. At 1971 Elaine Hatfield (Walster) formulated her concept of Passionate Love that later resulted in the Passionate Love Scale elaboration (Hatfield, & Sprecher, 1986; Walster (Hatfield), 1971). In the second edition of her and Ellen Berscheid book empirical study of the love became more expanded (Berscheid, & Walster, 1978). Karen & Kennet Dion elaborated different measures for the love study and studied the different aspects of the love place in personality and in personal relations (Dion, K.L., & Dion, K.K. 1973; Dion, K.K., & Dion, K.L. 1975).

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