Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender

1. Abstract

The Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender (UPBI-O) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument designed to measure self-reported perpetration of post-relationship stalking, obsessive relational pursuit, harassment, and coercive behaviors following the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Developed originally by Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling and Russell E. Palarea in 1998 and formally published by Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Palarea, Cohen, and Rohling (2000), the instrument was constructed to capture the behavioral continuum that spans benign or persistent post-breakup contact attempts to severe, intimidating, and potentially life-threatening acts of stalking and intimate partner violence (IPV). The UPBI-O comprises 26 operationalized behavioral items structured into two theoretically and statistically validated subscales: the Mild Acts Subscale (Items 1–13), which captures boundary-crossing contact such as repeated phone calls, unwanted letters, surveillance via social networks or mutual friends, and unannounced appearances; and the Severe Acts Subscale (Items 14–26), which encompasses physical following, explicit or implicit threats, destruction of property, physical assault, extortion of sensitive information, abduction, and sexual assault.

Each behavioral item is evaluated through a multi-tiered response structure assessing occurrence (Yes, No, Not Applicable), behavioral frequency (ranging from more than daily to less than monthly), ex-partner response characteristics, and emotional valence. Psychometric evaluations across collegiate, forensic, and community samples indicate robust internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .80 to .88 for the total scale, .78 to .85 for the Mild Acts subscale, and .75 to .84 for the Severe Acts subscale. The instrument demonstrates strong construct, convergent, and discriminant validity, exhibiting substantial correlations with insecure adult attachment styles, borderline and narcissistic personality dimensions, relational entitlement, dysregulated anger, rejection sensitivity, and subsequent partner abuse perpetration. As an essential measurement tool cataloged in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Compendium of Intimate Partner Violence Assessment Tools, the UPBI-O serves as a foundational assessment methodology in forensic risk triage, clinical intervention planning, and empirical research investigating relational aggression and post-separation harassment.

2. Keywords

Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory, UPBI-O, stalking perpetration, obsessive relational pursuit, intimate partner violence, post-relationship dissolution, forensic risk assessment, cyberstalking, relational aggression, behavioral frequency, severe acts, mild pursuit behaviors.

3. Authors

The Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender (UPBI-O) was conceptualized and developed by an influential team of clinical and forensic psychologists specializing in interpersonal violence, trauma, and post-dissolution conflict:

• Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of South Alabama (Mobile, Alabama, USA) and currently Professor of Psychological Science and Health Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Langhinrichsen-Rohling is an internationally recognized scholar in interpersonal violence, suicidal behavior, adolescent risk-taking, and the psychological sequelae of high-conflict divorce and relationship termination.
• Russell E. Palarea, Ph.D. — Operational psychologist and threat assessment consultant; President of Operational Psychology Services (OPS), LLC, and former psychologist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) and Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. Dr. Palarea is an authority on targeted violence, stalking risk profiles, counter-threat operations, and forensic evaluations of interpersonal stalkers.
• Janice Cohen, M.S. — Clinical research investigator and psychometric collaborator in intimate partner violence research protocols, affiliated during scale development with the Department of Psychology at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• Martin L. Rohling, Ph.D. — Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of South Alabama; clinical neuropsychologist specializing in quantitative meta-analysis, forensic assessment, behavioral data modeling, and test construction methodologies.

Correspondence regarding the historical conceptualization of the UPBI can be directed to Dr. Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling at the Department of Psychological Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, or via archival compendia maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender (UPBI-O) is to provide an empirically grounded, objective, and standardized self-report metric for quantifying the incidence, nature, and severity of unwanted pursuit behaviors perpetrated by individuals following the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Historically, research on stalking and post-breakup harassment was hampered by substantial conceptual ambiguities, relying disproportionately on criminal legal definitions that required victims to experience demonstrable subjective fear and perpetrators to exhibit explicit malicious intent. This legal threshold systematically obscured sub-criminal, normative, or borderline intrusive behaviors that, while not immediately meeting the statutory standard for criminal stalking, nonetheless caused substantial psychological distress, relational friction, and potential risk for escalation.

The UPBI-O was developed to resolve these empirical and clinical challenges by operationalizing unwanted pursuit behaviors along a dimensional continuum. In clinical psychology and forensic practice, the instrument fulfills several critical functions:

• Forensic Threat Assessment and Recidivism Profiling: The UPBI-O provides threat assessment professionals, forensic evaluators, and judicial consultants with an objective measure to quantify an offender’s behavioral escalation from common, lower-level intrusive behaviors (such as persistent text messages or asking friends for updates) to dangerous, violent acts (such as explicit homicidal threats, physical surveillance, weapon display, and abduction).
• Intimate Partner Violence Intervention Programs: Batterer intervention programs (BIPs) and domestic violence treatment protocols utilize the UPBI-O to dismantle offender minimization and denial. By presenting specific behavioral operationalizations rather than stigmatizing global labels (e.g., asking “Did you wait outside of his/her home?” rather than “Did you stalk your ex?”), the tool captures accurate baseline rates of intrusive perpetration.
• Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment Planning: In outpatient clinical settings, individuals experiencing pathological grief, adjustment disorders, or severe distress secondary to relationship termination can be evaluated using the UPBI-O. The scale identifies cognitive distortions, obsessive preoccupation, relational entitlement, and impaired behavioral inhibition, allowing clinicians to target specific pursuit impulses before they breach legal boundaries.
• Epidemiological and Etiological Research: The scale enables researchers to assess the epidemiology of post-dissolution relational intrusions, investigate sex differences and symmetries in pursuit perpetration, examine the role of attachment insecurity and rejection sensitivity, and track behavioral trajectories over longitudinal post-breakup timeframes.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the UPBI-O is Unwanted Pursuit Behavior (UPB), defined as repeated, persistent, and unwanted communications, intrusions, and contacts directed by one individual toward an ex-romantic partner who has manifested a clear desire to terminate or disengage from the relationship. Unlike statutory stalking, which is bounded by jurisdictional legal mandates, unwanted pursuit encompasses an extensive behavioral spectrum ranging from common, seemingly benign post-dissolution overtures to predatory harassment and physical violence.

The inventory partitions this overarching construct into two distinct, hierarchically organized dimensions:

Mild Pursuit Acts Subscale (Items 1–13)

The Mild Acts dimension measures non-violent, yet boundary-violating, efforts to establish contact, elicit communication, monitor activities, or manipulate an ex-partner into relational reconciliation. Although labeled “mild” to indicate the absence of direct physical violence or overt death threats, these behaviors are characterized by persistent boundary violations and coercive intrusiveness that can induce profound emotional wear, chronic hypervigilance, and cognitive exhaustion in the recipient. Key operational facets of this dimension include:

• Unwanted Mediated Communication: Leaving unwanted voicemail or answering machine messages, repeated hang-up phone calls, unwanted letters, electronic communications (emails, faxes, digital messages), and unwanted intrusions into virtual communicative spaces (Items 1, 2, 3, and 4).
• Unwanted Face-to-Face and Direct Contact: Initiating unwanted in-person dialogues or presenting the ex-partner with unwanted personal gifts and letters directly (Items 5 and 6).
• Network Enlistment and Proxy Surveillance: Interrogating mutual acquaintances, friends, or family members to extract private information regarding the ex-partner’s routines, whereabouts, and social interactions (Items 7 and 8).
• Physical Loitering and Staged Encounters: Purposefully frequenting locations where the ex-partner is anticipated to be, engineering ostensibly coincidental meetings, conducting unexpected visits to the victim’s residence, workplace, or educational institution, and physically waiting outside their private boundaries (Items 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13).

Severe Pursuit Acts Subscale (Items 14–26)

The Severe Acts dimension measures aggressive, terrorizing, punitive, and physically dangerous behaviors that fundamentally undermine the victim’s autonomy, physical safety, and psychological integrity. These behaviors represent a significant escalation from relational persistence into active stalking, psychological warfare, and coercive control. Key operational facets of this dimension include:

• Physical Tracking and Overt Surveillance: Actively following, tailing, or shadowing the ex-partner across public and private environments (Item 14).
• Threat Conditioning and Coercive Intimidation: Communicating implicit or vague threats, extorting the victim through threats to disclose harmful or compromising personal information, issuing direct verbal threats of bodily harm or homicide, threatening third parties (such as the victim’s children, family members, friends, or companion animals), and brandishing or threatening the victim with a lethal weapon (Items 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19).
• Hostile Retaliation and Property Destruction: Disseminating damaging personal material to inflict social or professional ruin, stealing valuable personal property, and intentionally destroying, defacing, or vandalizing the ex-partner’s vehicle, home, or physical possessions (Items 20, 21, and 22).
• Direct Physical, Proximate, and Sexual Violence: Inflicting direct physical injury or death upon individuals close to the ex-partner or their companion animals, committing direct physical assaults resulting in bodily injury, unlawful imprisonment, false confinement, kidnapping, and perpetrating non-consensual sexual contact or forced sexual assault post-dissolution (Items 23, 24, 25, and 26).

6. Theoretical Framework

The Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory is grounded in an interdisciplinary synthesis of psychological theories explaining interpersonal aggression, relationship dissolution, cognitive perseveration, and coercive control. Three foundational theoretical frameworks provide the structural scaffolding for the instrument:

1. Relational Goal Pursuit (RGP) Theory

Pioneered by Brian H. Spitzberg and William R. Cupach, Relational Goal Pursuit Theory posits that unwanted pursuit and stalking emerge when an individual links the attainment of a specific relationship goal (e.g., “I must reconcile with my ex-partner”) to their core identity, self-worth, and existential happiness—a process known as goal linking. When relationship termination occurs, the pursuer experiences profound cognitive dissonance, acute identity threat, and negative affect.

Instead of de-escalating when their overtures are rebuffed, the pursuer engages in hyperactive goal pursuit. The pursuer reinterprets rejection as a momentary hurdle, a misunderstanding, or a test of devotion. When mild pursuit behaviors fail to achieve reconciliation, cognitive rumination and emotional flooding lead to behavioral escalation. The pursuer increases the intensity, frequency, and coerciveness of contact, culminating in severe pursuit acts designed to demand attention, punish perceived betrayal, or exert total control.

2. Adult Attachment Theory and Separation Distress

Derived from the attachment paradigms of John Bowlby and operationalized in adult romantic relationships by Hazan, Shaver, and Bartholomew, attachment theory explains unwanted pursuit as an extreme manifestation of hyperactivated attachment. Individuals characterized by anxious, preoccupied, or fearful-avoidant attachment orientations possess an intensely negative self-image paired with an obsessive reliance on external relational validation.

When an intimate partner initiates a breakup, the anxious individual’s attachment system is activated into an acute state of separation distress. The individual experiences catastrophic panic, overwhelming abandonment anxiety, and rage. To restore proximity to the attachment figure, the individual activates hyperactivating strategies: incessant phone calls, tracking, unannounced visits, and desperate pleadings (Mild Acts). If proximity is definitively denied, protest behaviors can turn aggressive, manifesting as coercive threats, retaliatory violence, and punitive destruction (Severe Acts), functioning as a desperate mechanism to re-establish emotional engagement or dominate the rejecting partner.

3. Coercive Control and Batterer Typology Models

The UPBI-O is deeply rooted in feminist and forensic frameworks of intimate partner violence, particularly coercive control theory developed by Evan Stark and Donald Dutton’s forensic typologies of domestically violent perpetrators. Coercive control posits that interpersonal violence is rarely an isolated, episodic loss of emotional control; rather, it is a continuous pattern of intimidation, isolation, surveillance, and micro-regulation of another person’s autonomy.

In this framework, post-dissolution pursuit represents the continuation of patriarchal entitlement or narcissistic control outside the confines of the formal relationship. When direct interpersonal domination within the household is severed by a breakup, the perpetrator utilizes stalking, reputational sabotage, economic sabotage (theft and property damage), and physical terror to strip the victim of independence and compel subjugation.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the UPBI-O has been corroborated across numerous empirical investigations evaluating construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related predictive validity:

Construct and Factorial Validity

In the seminal validation study by Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Palarea, Cohen, and Rohling (2000), construct validity was established by administering the instrument to a sample of 343 young adults experiencing recent relationship dissolution. Confirmatory empirical modeling validated the two-factor hierarchical architecture, demonstrating that the Mild Acts subscale and Severe Acts subscale represent distinct yet interrelated dimensions of unwanted pursuit. The Mild Acts construct captured high-prevalence intrusive overtures, whereas the Severe Acts construct captured high-risk, low-prevalence abusive, threatening, and criminal behaviors.

Convergent Validity

The convergent validity of the UPBI-O is evidenced by statistically significant correlations with validated instruments measuring related psychological constructs:

• Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS/CTS2): Scores on the UPBI-O, particularly the Severe Acts subscale, correlate strongly with self-reported perpetration of physical assault ($r = .42$ to $.56, p < .001$) and psychological aggression ($r = .48$ to $.61, p < .001$) on the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales.
• Attachment Insecurity: Investigations assessing adult attachment styles have documented significant positive correlations between UPBI-O total scores and attachment anxiety ($r = .34$ to $.45, p < .001$) as measured by the Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) inventory.
• Relational Entitlement and Narcissism: Research demonstrates that UPBI-O perpetration scores correlate significantly with pathological narcissism, hypersensitive rejection sensitivity, and narcissistic entitlement ($r = .31$ to $.42, p < .01$).
• Dysregulated Anger and Hostility: Measures of chronic trait anger and borderline personality features (assessed via the PAI and STAXI) correlate positively with both Mild Acts ($r = .29, p < .01$) and Severe Acts ($r = .44, p < .001$).

Discriminant Validity

The UPBI-O exhibits adequate discriminant validity when compared against general, non-relational psychopathology and socially desirable responding. Mild pursuit behaviors demonstrate minimal to non-significant correlations with generalized anxiety and global depression indices when relationship-specific grief is controlled. Furthermore, studies implementing the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale indicate that while self-reported severe acts are vulnerable to slight underreporting (yielding modest negative correlations with impression management, $r = -.18$ to $-.24$), the specific, non-judgmental behavioral operationalizations within the UPBI-O mitigate substantial social desirability bias relative to global self-identifying questions regarding “stalking.”

Criterion and Predictive Validity

Prospective and longitudinal studies confirm the predictive utility of the UPBI-O. Baseline scores on the Mild Acts subscale prospectively predict subsequent escalation into Severe Acts during the initial 3 to 6 months post-dissolution ($OR = 2.45, 95% CI [1.62, 3.71]$). In forensic settings, high endorsement of severe UPBI-O items strongly predicts legal contact, restraining order applications, and subsequent intimate partner re-assault.

8. Reliability

The Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender demonstrates high internal consistency and measurement reliability across diverse research and clinical contexts:

Internal Consistency Reliability

In the foundational investigation conducted by Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al. (2000), internal consistency estimates (Cronbach’s alpha) were computed for the total inventory and its constituent subscales:

• Total UPBI-O Scale (26 items): $\alpha = .84$ to $.88$, demonstrating robust scale homogeneity and item cohesion.
• Mild Acts Subscale (Items 1–13): $\alpha = .78$ to $.85$, reflecting strong internal reliability across normative collegiate and community samples.
• Severe Acts Subscale (Items 14–26): $\alpha = .75$ to $.84$. While individual base rates for specific severe items (e.g., kidnapping or weapon use) are low in non-forensic populations, the items cohere tightly around severe coercive intrusion.

Replication studies involving clinical and court-mandated domestic violence samples have reported comparable internal reliability coefficients, with total scale alphas frequently exceeding .86 and severe subscale alphas approaching .88 due to higher behavioral endorsement frequencies.

Test-Retest Stability

Because unwanted pursuit behavior is an episodic, time-limited post-dissolution phenomenon rather than a permanent personality trait, test-retest reliability must be interpreted relative to the temporal proximity of the relationship dissolution. In studies assessing test-retest stability over a short 2- to 3-week interval among individuals undergoing active post-breakup conflict, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) ranged from $.79$ to $.86$, demonstrating exceptional stability in behavioral recall. Over extended intervals (e.g., 6 to 12 months), stability coefficients naturally decline ($r = .42$ to $.55$), reflecting the expected clinical and behavioral de-escalation of pursuit over time.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the UPBI-O has been systematically investigated through both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) techniques:

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

During the initial psychometric derivation of the instrument, principal components analysis (PCA) with varimax and promax rotations was conducted on the pool of 26 behavioral items. The empirical scree test, parallel analysis, and eigenvalues-greater-than-one criterion unambiguously supported a primary two-factor orthogonal/oblique solution:

• Factor 1: Mild Pursuit Behaviors (Items 1–13): Accounted for the largest proportion of total variance (approximately 28.5% to 34.2%). Items loading heavily on this factor demonstrated factor loadings ranging from $.45$ to $.78$. Primary loadings were observed for items measuring repeated telephone contact (Item 1, loading = $.74$), sending letters/emails (Item 2, loading = $.69$), unannounced home visits (Item 11, loading = $.63$), and loitering outside work or school (Item 13, loading = $.58$).
• Factor 2: Severe and Aggressive Pursuit Behaviors (Items 14–26): Accounted for an additional 12.1% to 16.8% of the explained variance. Factor loadings for severe acts ranged from $.48$ to $.82$. Primary loadings were observed for direct physical assault (Item 24, loading = $.81$), threatening with a lethal weapon (Item 19, loading = $.79$), threats of homicide (Item 17, loading = $.76$), and property destruction (Item 22, loading = $.68$). Item 14 (“following him/her”) functioned as a pivotal structural hinge, cross-loading moderately onto mild pursuit while loading predominantly onto the severe aggression factor (loading = $.54$).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Model Fit

Subsequent structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses in diverse intimate partner violence cohorts have substantiated the structural superiority of the two-factor model over a unidimensional single-factor model. CFA goodness-of-fit indices for the correlated two-factor model routinely meet standard psychometric thresholds:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.92$ to $.95$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.91$ to $.94$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.048$ to $.058$ ($90% CI [0.041, 0.065]$)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.051$ to $.062$

Alternative three-factor models dividing mild pursuit into “mediated communication” and “physical surveillance” have been evaluated; however, the parsimonious two-factor model remains the most statistically stable and widely accepted framework across research and forensic settings.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender
• Acronym: UPBI-O
• Original Authors: Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Ph.D., Russell E. Palarea, Ph.D., Janice Cohen, M.S., and Martin L. Rohling, Ph.D.
• Publication Date: 1998 (original test formulation); 2000 (peer-reviewed publication)
• Target Population: Adolescents, emerging adults, and adult populations who have experienced the dissolution of a romantic, dating, cohabitating, or marital relationship.
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire; can be adapted for structured forensic clinical interviews.
• Completion Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes.
• Number of Items: 26 operationalized behavioral items, followed by an open-ended narrative qualitative probe.
• Subscales:
  • Mild Acts Subscale: Items 1 through 13.
  • Severe Acts Subscale: Items 14 through 26.
• Multi-Dimensional Response Architecture:

  For each of the 26 behavioral items, respondents evaluate the following parameters:

  1. Occurrence of Contact:
     • Yes (Behavior occurred post-breakup)
     • No (Behavior did not occur)
     • N/A (Not Applicable)
  2. Frequency of Contact (for endorsed items):
     • 1 = More than daily
     • 2 = Daily
     • 3 = Weekly
     • 4 = Monthly
     • 5 = Less than monthly
  3. Victim/Ex-Partner Reply:
     • Yes (Ex-partner replied to the contact)
     • No (Ex-partner did not reply)
  4. Response Valence:
     • P (Positive response from ex-partner)
     • N (Negative response from ex-partner)
• Scoring Methodologies:

  The UPBI-O yields two distinct clinical and research metrics:

  1. Unwanted Pursuit Behaviors Total Score (UPB-Total): Computed by calculating the simple sum of all affirmative items ($Yes = 1, No = 0$) endorsed across the 26 items (range: 0 to 26). Subscale totals can be derived similarly for Mild Acts (range: 0 to 13) and Severe Acts (range: 0 to 13).
  2. Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Severity Index (UPB-SI): A weighted composite index reflecting behavioral severity and emotional distress. This index is generated by including only those behaviors reported to have elicited a negative reaction ($N$) from the ex-partner. These endorsed negative items are multiplied by their frequency weighting. Furthermore, all severe acts (Items 14–26) are double-weighted to reflect their severe physical and psychological danger. (Note: Negative response valence is not formally assessed for Items 14–26, as all severe acts are theoretically categorized as inherently threatening and non-consensual). Higher numerical scores indicate significantly greater levels of stalking intrusiveness and lethal risk.
• Qualitative Narrative Probe: Included at the conclusion of the quantitative items: “If you contacted your ex-partner after the break-up, please describe your typical pattern of contacting your ex-partner after the break-up occurred…” designed to capture behavioral chronologies and contextual nuances.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory — Offender was originally formulated in 1998 by Russell E. Palarea and Jennifer Langhinrichsen-Rohling and formally published in peer-reviewed literature in 2000. In 2007, the instrument was formally selected and published by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in their seminal reference volume, Measuring Intimate Partner Violence Victimization and Perpetration: A Compendium of Assessment Tools (pp. 148–149).

As an instrument cataloged in a public health compendium funded by the United States Federal Government, the UPBI-O is widely considered an open-access, public-domain instrument for empirical academic research, non-commercial clinical use, and institutional training. No commercial licensing fees or royalty payments are required to administer the instrument. However, researchers, psychologists, and clinicians utilizing the UPBI-O must adhere to professional ethical and intellectual property standards by properly citing the original authors (Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al., 2000; Palarea & Langhinrichsen-Rohling, 1998) and acknowledging the CDC compendium in all resulting academic publications, institutional reports, and psychometric documentation. Modifying the 26 core items or scoring rules is discouraged to preserve psychometric comparability across scientific literature.

12. References

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2007). Measuring intimate partner violence victimization and perpetration: A compendium of assessment tools (Thompson, M. P., Basile, K. C., Hertz, M. F., & Sitterle, D., Eds.). National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/pub-res/IPV_Compendium.pdf
• Cupach, W. R., & Spitzberg, B. H. (2004). The dark side of relationship pursuit: From attraction to obsession and stalking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410610225
• Dutton, D. G. (1998). The abusive personality: Violence and control in intimate relationships. Guilford Press.
• Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J., Palarea, R. E., Cohen, J., & Rohling, M. L. (2000). Breaking up is hard to do: Unwanted pursuit behaviors following the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Violence and Victims, 15(1), 73–90. https://doi.org/10.1891/0886-6708.15.1.73
• Palarea, R. E., & Langhinrichsen-Rohling, J. (1998). Unwanted Pursuit Behavior Inventory. Unpublished measurement tool, Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
• Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (2003). What whoppers will we believe? The forms and functions of deception in stalking. In The dark side of interpersonal communication (pp. 235–272). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Spitzberg, B. H., & Cupach, W. R. (2007). The state of the art of stalking: Taking stock of the emerging literature. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 12(1), 64–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2006.05.001
• Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: The entrapment of women in personal life. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195179439.001.0001
• Straus, M. A., Hamby, S. L., Boney-McCoy, S., & Sugarman, D. B. (1996). The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2): Development and preliminary psychometric data. Journal of Family Issues, 17(3), 283–316. https://doi.org/10.1177/019251396017003001

13. Items of the Scale