After 18 years of marriage, Jim Donovan still feels passionate love for his wife. And he has the quiz score to prove it.

"My score was 101 and yes, I think it's a good overall snapshot of my love for (my wife) Tracy," said Donovan, 48, executive director for the Sheraton Hawai'i Bowl.

Donovan is referring to the Passionate Love Scale, created by University of Hawai'i psychology professor Elaine Hatfield.

The 15-question quiz is meant to gauge how much in love a person is by measuring three aspects of being intensely in love: cognitive, physiological/emotional, and behavioral aspects.

It "really is designed to tap those feelings when you're wildly in love," said Hatfield, who developed the quiz in 1986 with her student, Susan Sprecher, now a sociologist at Illinois State University. It was featured two weeks ago in Time magazine's "The Science of Romance" special, an issue devoted to new research on passionate love and sexual desire.

Results of the questionnaire range from "extremely cool" — feeling no passion at all — to "extremely passionate" — finding it impossible to keep away from the object of one's desire, even when pursuit is dangerous or foolish.

"That's called stalking," Tracy Orillo-Donovan, Donovan's wife, said laughing.

Orillo-Donovan also took the quiz and had a similar score to her husband's, a 95, which put them both in the "passionate" category — meaning passionately in love, but not with such unrelenting intensity as the "extremely passionate" category.

"It's just a matter of sustaining that level of interest," said Orillo-Donovan, 45, a broadcast manager at UH. Communication among couples is also crucial, Orillo-Donovan added.

"I think relationships go through chapters," Donovan said. "Sometimes it takes certain chapters to set up other chapters ... but those chapters all add up to something positive, just like a great book."

Jennifer Paterson, a UH graduate student in social psychology and a student of Hatfield's, is using the Passionate Love Scale in her research on how people of different social classes in England might love differently.

Paterson said her personal preference for the ideal Passionate Love Scale result would be the "average" category — feeling occasional bursts of passion.

"You want to feel some (passion), yet you have to be realistic," said the Makiki resident, 24.

Over time, it's natural for love to change, she said.

"So if you start off really high (on the scale), you're going to crash," Paterson said. "If you start off low, you'll just flatline."

Researching topics on love and sex since 1960, Hatfield has found that in general, falling in love and feeling intense love can happen to anyone from anywhere and at any age.

"It starts surprisingly early and it ends surprisingly late," said Hatfield.

While the scale was created mainly as a research tool, readers "can do it for fun," Hatfield said.

Donovan and Orillo-Donovan, of Hawai'i Kai, said they enjoyed taking the quiz.

"It's a really good self check on seeing where you or your partner are at in your passion for each other," Donovan said.

And if couples score low, they'll know to work on their relationships, he said.

"It doesn't matter if you've been in a relationship for two months, two years or 20 years," Orillo-Donovan said. "It's always interesting to find out how passionate your partner feels toward you."

Reach Zenaida Serrano at zserrano@honoluluadvertiser.com.