Evaluating the Aware Inventory as a Measure of Relationship Factors among a Sample of High School Students

The Awareness of Attitudes and Relationship Expectations (AWARE) Inventory was administered to 160 high school students in Wyoming. Factor analysis showed the inventory did not have the expected 11 dimensional factor structure. Most of the intended 10-item scales yielded unacceptably low estimates of internal consistency reliability. Through an iterative process, one internally consistent scale of 17 items (α = .80) was derived. Researchers should be careful to evaluate the AWARE Inventory with their own samples before proceeding under an assumption that its scales reliably assess the 11 dimensions expected.