Relative importance of conflict topics for within-couple tests: The case of demand/withdraw interaction.

Abstract

and show that common procedures for selecting conflict discussion topics can lead to widespread violations of the assumption in empirical studies. Study 1 conducts a systematic review of the literature and finds that few existing studies ensure relative importance is met. Study 2 uses two empirical samples to estimate how often relative importance is violated when not ensured, finding it is violated in one third of interaction tasks. Study 3 examines the potential consequences of violating the relative importance assumption when testing within-couple differences in observed behavior, focusing on gender differences in the demand/withdraw pattern. Results show that these tests were profoundly impacted by violations of relative importance. In light of these violations, we conduct a more rigorous test of demand/withdraw theories and clarify previously inconsistent results in the literature. We recommend explicit consideration of relative importance for studies testing within-couple effects, provide methodological recommendations for selecting topics in future studies, and discuss implications for clinical practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).