Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale

Abstract

The Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale (often abbreviated as the Reiss PSP Scale) is an influential psychometric instrument developed by sociologist Ira L. Reiss in 1964 to systematically quantify individual and normative standards regarding premarital sexual behavior. Designed during a transformative era in American sociology and sexual ethics, the instrument applies the cumulative measurement principles of Guttman scaling to assess the degree to which an individual accepts progressively intimate physical behaviors—specifically kissing, petting, and full coitus—under varying degrees of emotional commitment and affectional context, ranging from formal engagement to the total absence of affection. The operational instrument comprises two parallel 12-item forms: one evaluating behavioral standards for men (the Male Form) and the other evaluating behavioral standards for women (the Female Form). In addition, researchers frequently employ abbreviated subscales and modernized continuous-rating formats derived from the original cumulative paradigm.

Across both initial student cohorts and large-scale national probability samples, the scale demonstrated notable psychometric properties, consistently meeting or exceeding Louis Guttman’s classical .90 criterion for the Coefficient of Reproducibility (typically ranging between .91 and .96) and surpassing the minimum thresholds for the Coefficient of Scalability. The instrument played a foundational role in empirical family sociology by demonstrating that sexual attitudes are structured along a single, cumulative continuum of permissiveness rather than operating as disjointed, idiosyncratic beliefs. This article provides a comprehensive psychometric and theoretical analysis of the Reiss PSP Scale, reviewing its historical development, operational dimensions, theoretical underpinnings in reference group theory and family sociology, validity and reliability documentation, factor analytic disputes, administration standards, and enduring legacy in the psychological and sociological study of human sexuality.

Keywords

Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale, Premarital Sexual Standards, Guttman Scaling, Sexual Attitudes, Sexual Permissiveness, Sociological Measurement, Ira L. Reiss, Psychometrics, Adolescent Sexuality, Courtship Norms, Sexual Double Standard, Psychosexual Behavior

Authors

The Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale was conceptualized, validated, and published by Ira L. Reiss, Ph.D.

At the time of the scale’s initial publication in 1964, Dr. Reiss was affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) in Iowa City, Iowa. He subsequently served as Professor of Sociology and Director of the Family Study Center at the University of Minnesota, where he spent several decades expanding his theoretical and empirical research into human sexual attitudes, cross-cultural sexual systems, and sociological frameworks of sexual health.

Dr. Reiss is recognized as a pioneer in the sociological analysis of human sexuality. Over a career spanning more than five decades, he served as President of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS), received the Kinsey Award for outstanding contributions to sex research, and published landmark monographs including Premarital Sexual Standards in America (1960) and The Social Context of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness (1967). Inquiries regarding the historical documentation of the scale are typically directed through university library archives, academic repositories housing the National Council on Family Relations historical papers, or contemporary sociology reference collections.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale is to measure the psychological and normative boundaries of an individual’s acceptance of premarital sexual relations. Prior to the mid-twentieth century, social-scientific inquiries into premarital sexual behavior were predominantly descriptive, relying heavily on frequency tabulations of reported physical acts—such as those popularized by Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues—without establishing a standardized, psychometrically validated methodology for assessing the underlying cognitive and normative standards governing those behaviors.

Reiss recognized that individuals do not perceive sexual behaviors in an ideological vacuum; rather, societal actors evaluate sexual conduct by weighing the physical nature of the act against the relational, affective context in which it occurs. The Reiss PSP Scale was constructed to address three major needs:

• Formalization of a Cumulative Metric: To determine whether sexual permissiveness constitutes a unidimensional, cumulative cognitive construct—meaning that an individual who accepts full coitus under low-affection conditions will systematically accept all less intimate behaviors (petting, kissing) under higher-affection conditions.
• Empirical Investigation of the Sexual Double Standard: To provide parallel measurement matrices (assessing standards for men versus standards for women) capable of statistically isolating the traditional double standard (permitting greater sexual freedom for men than for women) versus egalitarian or transitional standards.
• Sociological and Clinical Application: To furnish researchers, sociologists, developmental psychologists, and marriage counselors with an objective instrument capable of predicting sexual decision-making, marital adjustment, interpersonal conflict among dating couples, and cross-generational normative shifts across distinct demographic, racial, and religious subgroups.

In clinical and educational settings, the scale has served as a diagnostic and heuristic tool to help individuals and romantic partners clarify their respective sexual values, explore discrepancies in sexual expectations, and resolve relational conflict originating from divergent socializations. In academic research, it continues to serve as an index for evaluating changes in adolescent socialization, the impact of religious orthodoxy on sexual conservatism, and the broader institutional linkages between family structures, peer groups, and gender-role ideologies.

Psychological Construct

The central psychological construct measured by the instrument is premarital sexual permissiveness (PSP). Reiss conceptualized permissiveness not as reckless hedonism or deviance, but as the normative extent to which an individual considers varying forms of physical intimacy acceptable prior to marriage. The construct is defined by the intersection of two critical axes:

1. The Physical Intimacy Dimension

The physical axis encompasses a clear hierarchy of physiological intimacy, divided into three defined behavioral thresholds:

• Kissing: Encompassing non-coital oral intimacy, ranging from casual kissing to prolonged romantic kissing. Historically, this represents the least restrictive and most culturally universal tier of courtship intimacy.
• Petting: Defined operationally as sexually stimulative physical touch of the breasts, genitals, or erogenous zones, either above or beneath clothing, excluding penetrative intercourse. Petting constitutes an intermediate threshold involving substantial sexual arousal without full coital engagement.
• Full Coitus (Premarital Intercourse): The physical act of penile-vaginal intercourse between unmarried individuals. Coitus represents the highest behavioral threshold on the physical intimacy continuum, carrying historical prohibitions related to pregnancy, social legitimacy, and institutional morality.

2. The Interpersonal-Affectional Dimension

The affectional axis evaluates the relational context required by the respondent to render the physical behavior morally, ethically, or socially acceptable. Reiss delineated four distinct levels of affection, arranged from the most committed to the least committed:

• Engagement: The presence of an explicit, formal marital commitment between romantic partners, representing maximal institutional alignment and low relational ambiguity.
• Deep Love: A profound emotional and romantic attachment between partners, absent an explicit formal engagement or institutional contract.
• Strong Affection: Sincere interpersonal liking, emotional warmth, and mutual care that does not reach the psychological intensity of complete romantic love.
• No Affection: The total absence of emotional bonding, warmth, or interpersonal commitment, characterized by purely recreational, physical, or casual acquaintanceship.

Typological Categorization of Sexual Standards

By mapping responses across these two axes, the Reiss PSP construct operationalizes four classic sexual standards that categorize individual and cultural orientations:

1. Abstinence: The normative belief that premarital coitus is wrong for both men and women, regardless of the emotional context or marital status. Intimacy is restricted to kissing or restrained petting under conditions of affection.
2. Permissiveness with Affection: The standard asserting that premarital intercourse is acceptable for both partners provided that strong affection, deep love, or engagement exists. Physical intimacy is viewed as an expression of genuine emotional connection.
3. Permissiveness without Affection: The standard maintaining that coitus and petting are acceptable for both men and women even in the absence of emotional attachment, framing sexual activity as a mutually pleasurable physical pursuit.
4. The Double Standard: An asymmetrical standard wherein premarital sexual intercourse is considered acceptable for men (often under conditions of low or no affection) but condemned or severely restricted for women. Reiss distinguished between the orthodox double standard (forbidding coitus for all women while permitting it for men) and the transitional double standard (permitting coitus for women only if in love or engaged, while allowing men greater latitude regardless of emotional attachment).

Theoretical Framework

The development of the Reiss PSP Scale is embedded within twentieth-century sociological and social-psychological theory, synthesizing reference group theory, structural-functionalist family sociology, and gender-role socialization models. Reiss formulated a formal propositional theory of premarital sexual permissiveness that served as the conceptual architecture for the scale.

Reference Group Theory and Autonomy

Drawing on the theoretical work of Robert K. Merton and Theodore Newcomb, Reiss posited that individual sexual attitudes reflect the norms of the primary reference groups to which an individual looks for behavioral validation. In traditional agrarian or highly institutionalized family systems, parental and kin networks serve as the primary reference group. Because parents are structurally invested in social placement, lineage legitimacy, and the prevention of disruptive non-marital consequences, parental reference groups universally promote low sexual permissiveness.

Conversely, as modernization, urban migration, and higher education detach young adults from direct familial monitoring, the autonomous youth peer group emerges as the dominant reference group. Youth culture, prioritized around immediate gratification, personal exploration, and romantic experimentation, consistently endorses higher levels of permissiveness. Therefore, Reiss hypothesized that the degree of premarital sexual permissiveness held by an individual is directly proportional to their psychological and social autonomy from the traditional family system.

Structural-Functional Institutional Linkages

Reiss organized his theoretical propositions around the relationship between the sexual institution and other major societal institutions (the family, organized religion, the economic order, and the political apparatus):

• The Marital and Familial System: Responsibility for dependent children and maintenance of marital stability incentivize adults to enforce conservative sexual standards. When individuals enter marriage and parenthood, their personal permissiveness systematically decreases to protect familial boundaries.
• Religious Systems: Highly dogmatic and institutionalized religious bodies function as secondary agents of family control, reinforcing restrictions against non-marital sexual expression. Reiss theorized that high religious orthodoxy would systematically correlate with low scores on the PSP Guttman scale.
• Gender Socialization and Power Asymmetries: The persistence of the double standard was conceptualized not as an innate biological divergence, but as a structural reflection of male power within courtship and marital bargaining. As women gain social, educational, and economic autonomy, the normative necessity of female sexual containment weakens, prompting a shift from the double standard toward egalitarian standards of permissiveness with affection.

Validity

Extensive empirical studies have evaluated the construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity of the Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale across diverse sociodemographic cohorts.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was initially established by Dr. Reiss through hypothesis-driven testing across distinct demographic groups with known normative profiles. In his seminal 1964 and 1967 investigations—utilizing a bi-racial sample of high school and college students alongside a stratified national probability sample of 1,515 adult Americans—the scale successfully discriminated between cohorts predicted to harbor distinct sexual values:

• Respondents with high levels of church attendance and religious orthodoxy scored substantially lower on both the Male and Female forms of the scale than secular or religiously liberal respondents.
• Students with greater perceived peer autonomy demonstrated significantly higher permissiveness scores than students who reported strong attachment to parental authority, confirming Reiss’s autonomy propositions.
• Racial and regional comparisons indicated distinct response patterns reflecting localized subcultural norms, with urban cohorts showing higher acceptance of coitus under affectional conditions than rural, conservative cohorts.

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity has been repeatedly verified by examining correlations between Reiss PSP scores and related psychosexual constructs:

• Self-Reported Sexual Behavior: Studies by Hampe and Chasteen (1972) and Clayton (1972) identified strong, positive correlations ($r = .55$ to $.70$) between an individual’s score on the cumulative Guttman scale and their actual self-reported history of premarital petting and coitus. Respondents holding high-permissiveness attitudes consistently reported higher rates of lifetime sexual partners and earlier age at first intercourse.
• General Sexual Attitudes: In subsequent decades, researchers evaluated the Reiss PSP Scale alongside newer multidimensional inventories, such as the Hendrick Sexual Attitudes Scale (SAS). The Reiss PSP exhibited robust positive correlations with Hendrick’s “Sexual Permissiveness” subscale ($r > .60$) and expected negative correlations with sexual communion and conservative sexual morality scales.

Discriminant Validity

The scale demonstrates clear differentiation from general social liberalism, neuroticism, and acquiescent response bias. While permissiveness moderately correlates with general political liberalism ($r \approx .20$ to $.30$), it functions independently of broad personality traits, verifying that the scale measures a domain-specific cognitive standard rather than general social nonconformity or impulsive sensation seeking.

Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of reliability for the Reiss PSP Scale historically relies on the classical metrics of Guttman scalogram analysis, complemented in modern research by internal consistency indices and test-retest assessments.

Guttman Scalogram Metrics

In Guttman scaling, reliability is fundamentally operationalized through the Coefficient of Reproducibility (CR), which denotes the proportion of individual responses that can be accurately reproduced solely from knowledge of the respondent’s total scale score. Louis Guttman established a minimum standard of $.90$ for an acceptable scale:

• In Reiss’s original 1964 validation studies across high school, college, and adult samples, the 12-item Male Form yielded Coefficients of Reproducibility ranging from .914 to .962.
• The 12-item Female Form yielded Coefficients of Reproducibility ranging from .910 to .958.
• The Coefficient of Scalability (CS), developed by Herbert Menzel to assess whether the high reproducibility of a scale is an artifact of extreme marginal distributions, consistently exceeded the standard threshold of $.60$ (typically yielding values between $.65$ and $.78$), confirming genuine cumulative unidimensionality.
• The Minimal Marginal Reproducibility (MMR) across sample iterations hovered between $.60$ and $.72$, ensuring that the observed CR values represented a substantial reduction in prediction error compared to marginal expectations alone.

Internal Consistency and Temporal Stability

When the binary or Likert-adapted versions of the Reiss PSP Scale are analyzed under classical test theory (CTT):

• Cronbach’s Alpha: Modern administrations calculating Cronbach’s alpha report internal consistency coefficients ranging between $\alpha = .88$ and $.94$ for both the full 12-item scale and derived 5-item short forms.
• Test-Retest Reliability: Longitudinal and panel studies assessing temporal stability across intervals ranging from two weeks to three months have reported test-retest correlation coefficients between $r = .82$ and $.89$, indicating that premarital sexual standards represent stable cognitive schemata rather than transient situational attitudes.

Factor Analysis

Although the Reiss PSP Scale was constructed under the deterministic assumptions of Guttman scalogram analysis rather than linear factor analysis, subsequent psychometricians subjected the instrument to both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to rigorously test its unidimensionality.

Unidimensional vs. Multidimensional Disputes

In the late 1960s and 1970s, researchers such as Heltsley and Broderick (1969), Clayton (1972), and Hampe and Chasteen (1972) re-examined the 12-item matrix using principal components analysis. Their findings revealed that while the items load heavily on a dominant primary factor (accounting for over 55% to 65% of the total variance, supporting the operational utility of a single composite score), the scale possesses secondary multidimensional nuances:

• Factor 1: Coital Permissiveness / Low-Affection Intimacy: Items assessing premarital coitus under conditions of strong affection, no affection, and love load heavily on this primary component. These items reflect the critical threshold of modern sexual liberalism.
• Factor 2: Petting and Affectionate Intimacy: Items assessing non-coital petting under conditions of engagement, love, and strong affection load on an identifiable secondary factor. In conservative or highly religious populations, individuals readily accept kissing and petting while drawing a strict, non-negotiable boundary against coitus, creating localized deviations from pure Guttman scalability.

Confirmatory Factor Analytic (CFA) Findings

Modern structural equation modeling (SEM) evaluations of Likert-format adaptations have tested both single-factor and two-factor oblique models. A single general factor demonstrates acceptable fit when correlated error terms between items sharing identical relational stems (e.g., matching the “no affection” stem across different physical behaviors) are specified. Representative fit indices from contemporary psychometric reassessments include:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .94 – .97
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .93 – .96
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .052 – .068 (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .041 to .079)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .038 – .049

These findings substantiate that despite minor second-order behavioral distinctions, the scale possesses a sufficiently coherent latent core to justify the computation of an overall permissiveness composite score.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational characteristics and administration guidelines of the Reiss PSP Scale are summarized below:

• Test Type: Sociological and psychological self-report rating scale based on cumulative Guttman scaling methodology.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (typically aged 18 years and older; adapted in select studies for youth aged 14–17).
• Number of Items: 24 items in total across two parallel sections: 12 items on the Male Form (evaluating behaviors for men) and 12 items on the Female Form (evaluating behaviors for women). Many researchers administer solely one form or combine the items into a gender-neutral or single-target 12-item protocol.
• Administration Format: Standardized self-administered paper-and-pencil or secure computerized questionnaire.
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Original Response Format: Binary forced-choice (Agree vs. Disagree) or multiple-step agreement categories (Strongly Agree, Agree, Medium Agree, Medium Disagree, Disagree, Strongly Disagree) which are traditionally dichotomized to permit Guttman error counting and scalogram analysis.
• Scoring and Error Calculation Procedures:
  • Scalogram Scoring: An individual’s score corresponds to the total number of items endorsed (ranging from 0 to 12 per form). In a perfect Guttman pattern, an endorsement of a higher-order item (e.g., coitus without affection) implies automatic agreement with all lower-order items.
  • Error Counting: Departures from the ideal cumulative step pattern are scored as “errors” using the classical Goodenough-Edwards technique or Cornell technique to calculate the Coefficient of Reproducibility: $CR = 1 – (\text{Total Errors} / (\text{Number of Items} \times \text{Number of Respondents}))$.
  • Continuous Likert Scoring: In non-Guttman research designs, responses to each item are scored on a 1-to-5 or 1-to-6 continuous scale, with higher cumulative sums indicating greater premarital sexual permissiveness.
• Primary Subscales: Total Male Permissiveness Score, Total Female Permissiveness Score, and the Derived Double Standard Discrepancy Index (calculated by subtracting the Female Form score from the Male Form score).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Reiss Premarital Sexual Permissiveness Scale was formally introduced to the scientific literature in 1964 through Dr. Ira L. Reiss’s landmark paper in the Journal of Marriage and the Family (Volume 26, Issue 2, pages 188–198), published by the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR).

The scale was developed as an academic, non-commercial instrument. In its historical context and standard academic usage, no commercial fee is charged for non-profit educational or scholarly empirical research. However, because the original publication is copyrighted by the National Council on Family Relations (and accessed via scholarly distributors such as JSTOR and Wiley-Blackwell), researchers wishing to reproduce the complete instrument in commercial test batteries, textbooks, or digital commercial assessment products must obtain formal copyright clearance from the publisher or the author’s estate. Researchers conducting independent empirical inquiries are advised to consult the original 1964 publication and cite the source accordingly.

References

• Clayton, R. R. (1972). Premarital sexual intercourse: A substantive test of the Reiss scale. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 34(2), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.2307/350795
• Guttman, L. (1944). A basis for scaling qualitative data. American Sociological Review, 9(2), 139–150. https://doi.org/10.2307/2086306
• Hampe, G. D., & Chasteen, H. E. (1972). Measurement of premarital sexual permissiveness: A comparison of two scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 34(3), 481–487. https://doi.org/10.2307/350444
• Heltsley, M. E., & Broderick, C. B. (1969). Religiosity and premarital sexual permissiveness: Reexamination of Reiss’s hypothesis. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 31(3), 441–443. https://doi.org/10.2307/349926
• Hendrick, C., & Hendrick, S. (1987). Multidimensionality of sexual attitudes. Journal of Sex Research, 23(4), 502–526. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224498709551387
• Menzel, H. (1953). A new coefficient for scalogram analysis. Public Opinion Quarterly, 17(2), 268–280. https://doi.org/10.1086/266453
• Reiss, I. L. (1960). Premarital sexual standards in America: A sociological analysis of the relative cultural values of the sexual codes. Free Press.
• Reiss, I. L. (1964). The scaling of premarital sexual permissiveness. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 26(2), 188–198. https://doi.org/10.2307/349726
• Reiss, I. L. (1967). The social context of premarital sexual permissiveness. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Sprecher, S., & Hatfield, E. (1996). Premarital sexual standards among U.S. college students: Comparison with Russian and Japanese students. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 25(3), 261–288. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02438165

Items of the Scale