Measuring Marital Quality: A Critical Look at the Dependent Variable

TLDR

The study critiques how marital quality is operationalized and proposes semantic and empirical criteria for developing a new index. The authors examine existing measures, illustrate with Spanier's Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and construct a Quality Marriage Index from data on 430 participants in four states. The new QMI demonstrates superior covariate relationships compared to traditional marital quality measures.

Abstract

This paper critically examines the operationalization of marital quality indices used as dependent variables. First, it looks at the functioning and construction of marital quality variables. In particular, Spanier's Dyadic Adjustment Scale is used to illustrate the arguments. Second, it presents both semantic and empirical criteria to judge the development of a marital quality index. Finally, it presents a Quality Marriage Index (QMI) based on the introduced criteria. This index was constructed using data from 430 people across four states. Several advantages of the QMI over more traditional measures are shown in terms of how co variates relate to the index.