Measuring relationship maintenance behaviors: Critique and development of the revised relationship maintenance behavior scale

The most frequently utilized measures of relational maintenance (i.e., the five-factor relational maintenance strategies measure, or RMSM, and the revised seven-factor RMSM) suffer from fundamental measurement flaws. Therefore, this article describes a series of studies designed to identify weaknesses in these measures and offer an improvement — the Relational Maintenance Behavior Measure (RMBM). When sound item-construction practices are followed, neither prior RMSM is viable. However, the factor structure of the RMBM is stable across three samples. The RMBM and the five-factor RMSM were examined in association with the relational characteristics of satisfaction, liking, commitment, and love. It is argued that the RMBM is a psychometrically superior measure of the original maintenance dimensions identified in earlier research.