BACKGROUND:

There is a need for a short and easily administered scale, in the Swedish language, for assessing partner relationships in the health care of persons with cardiac disease.

PURPOSE:

To establish the reliability and validity of the Swedish version of the Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS).

DESIGN:

The present pilot study has a methodological design.

FINDINGS:

Content validity has been tested for relevance, clarity and readability. The scale was tested for construct validity with explorative factor analysis. The reliability was tested by internal consistency and test-retest analysis. The result showed a two-factor solution, which does not correspond to the original proposed one-factor solution. The factor analyses revealed two quite distinct factors of RAS, labelled "Relationship built on expectations and satisfaction of needs" and "Relationship built on love and devotion".

CONCLUSIONS:

The scale has satisfactory psychometric properties in terms of content validity, construct validity, homogeneity and stability in a population of persons with cardiac disease. Wider evaluations of the RAS for other populations and settings are recommended.