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The article discusses various issues related to the marital adjustment. Marital adjustment studies typically account for only a small part of the variance. New explanatory variables should be sought. Commitment for example, has not been considered in any of the published research. For this study, a Bogardus-type scale of commitment to one's marriage was constructed and included in a study of romanticism and marital adjustment. The sample consisted of 109 married pairs, randomly selected from a population of married university students. The correlation coefficient of commitment and marital adjustment was .32. This study, then, represents an attempt to help account for those succeeding in marriage that shouldn't or those failing to succeed when they should according to marriage prediction scores. This pilot study indicates that a heretofore-unused variable, commitment, has a high correlation coefficient with marital adjustment as the traditional variables do, and therefore gives at least limited promise for future research. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, the relationship between marital adjustment and commitment found in this study are as large as the relationships with other variables typically found to be related to marital adjustment. Hopefully, this article may call attention to dynamic interactive relationships and stimulate the discovery of new variables which can be added to the customary "static" or "past tense" variables such as education, parents' marital happiness, etc. to increase the predictive power of measuring instruments.

The short-form Locke Marital Adjustment Questionnaire was factor-analyzed to obtain distinct components of marital adjustment for husbands and wives. Principal axis factor analysis with varimax rotations of data for 149 wives and 157 husbands indicated that the instrument is an internally consistent measure of marital adjustment, and that this general aspect consists of two separate components--sexual congeniality and compatibility. Factor scores for each factor were found to be stable over a two-year test-retest interval. Factor scores and a slight modification of item content are proposed for future use of the instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The NORC data on occupational mobility of women presented by DeJong, et al. (Dec., 1971) are reanalyzed to the end of comparing male and female patterns of occupational mobility in the U. S. Both male and female occupational mobility patterns are then compared to patterns of marital mobility (from father's occupation to husband's) of wives not in the civilian labor force. For the comparisons, all three matrices are adjusted to identical marginal distributions to eliminate the extent to which size of occupational categories of either origin or destination differ. The occupational mobility of women is found to be less similar to mobility patterns of men than is women's marital mobility. Thus, similar patterns govern movement of both men and women from their origins to the status of male head of their families. The occupational mobility of the women themselves, however, does not follow the patterns of men so closely as DeJong, et al. concluded in their original article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Functional" marriage textbooks usually state that differences between spouses in class background are, regardless of adult status, influences for marital maladjustment and instability; but a search of the literature revealed no empirical support for this generalization. Data from a sample of males in a high-status occupation reveal no marital instability which can be attributed to an interaction between the class backgrounds of the spouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study is an interpretive description of certain kinds of magic or dirt sorcery used by women in Belize (formerly British Honduras) to preserve marital and common-law unions. Relations between the sexes are briefly described, primarily in economic terms, and suggestions are made as to the possible functions of the magical ‘methods of attachment,’ which may serve as stabilizing influences in a society where marriage is quite brittle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article determines MMPI differences among alcoholics considered to be relatively well adjusted and those less well adjusted in their marriage. There exist very few studies of the relationship between marital adjustment and alcoholism. None were found focusing specifically upon marital discord, utilizing the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality inventory (MMPI) as an indication of maladjustment. While it is well known that alcoholism is associated with poor marital adjustment, there have been very few studies of this other than case studies.

The article reports the use of a Marital Roles Inventory to measure marital adjustment. This inventory is an indirect type of scale based upon the interaction of the marital roles of the spouses and which assesses marital adjustment rather than the personality traits associated with marital adjustment. The Marital Roles Inventory tests marital adjustment within the theoretical framework of role theory and is based upon the concept that the family as an institution is an organization of roles. Within the family, the roles of the husband-and-father and wife-and-mother are units of conduct, which stand out as regularities by their recurrence and form patterns of mutually oriented conduct.

In 1953 Nisbet stated: "At the present time, in all the social sciences, the various synonyms of alienation have a foremost place in studies of human relations. Investigations of the 'unattached,' the 'marginal,' the 'obsessive,' the 'normless,' and the 'isolated individual' all testify to the central place occupied by the (hypothesis of alienation in contemporary social science.)… It has become nearly as prevalent as the doctrine of enlightened self-interest was two generations ago. (It is more than a hypothesis; it is a perspective.") There has, since that date, been a slowly growing body of literature and empirical research. Theorists have suggested numerous possible correlates or results of Alienation, such as Apathy, Authoritarianism, Conformity, Cynicism, Hoboism, Political Apathy, Political Hyperactivity, Personalization of Politics, Prejudice, Privatization, Psychosis, Regression, and Suicide. However, as Aiken and Hage have noted, "social scientists have become enamored, perhaps inebriated, with the idea of alienation in modem society and have attempted to forge indices of man's sense of malaise. One major fault of most of these discussions is that alienation has been defined, measured, and discussed as if it represents some 'free floating' human condition irrespective of specific social contexts which produce such mental states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with Ogburn, the place of economic factors within the modem conjugal unit has been minimized. It has been argued that the major dimension of the current nuclear unit is the affective, the emotional, the expressive. The very term "marital adjustment" connotes that external constraints are less vital than the "ability" of the couple to "work out" interpersonal problems. The observers leaped from the data-the decrease of joint economic participation between husbands and wives-to the inference that modern marriage coheres or collapses almost solely on the basis of affective elements. Parsons has recently restated and expanded this position by asserting that "it is of course a commonplace that the [my italics] American family is predominantly … an urban middle-class family … there has emerged a remarkably uniform, basic type of family." For Parsons, this "uniform family" rests chiefly on personality variables which he analyzes in a psychoanalytic context. It may be that except at the most general structural level, Parsons' "uniform family" may be as unfortunate a term as was his "isolated family" of a decade ago. For it is also possible to leap from the data to the alternative hypothesis that economic factors still play a vital role within the conjugal family albeit in a differentiated form. Is it not strange to realize that an inherent feature of modern society is complexity, specialization, and differentiation, and that this can be seen in every part of society-every part, that is, except the conjugal family system? Here we are told that there is "remarkable" homogeneity based on the "indispensable function" of expressive gratifications. It seems just as simple and perhaps more logical to assume the opposite, viz., that increasing societal complexity should be related to a more complex family system. In any event, given the ever increasing complexity of our society, the burden of proof is on those who argue that the conjugal family is going the other way occupations of the last century. Yet while agricultural occupations were supposedly inextricable from the family, the impact of modern occupations is largely ignored and thus unexplored.Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to set forth a conceptual schema which indicates that there is significant differentiation among types of conjugal families, and that this differentiation is based on differing relationships to the occupational structure. First, we will outline the five sets of variables within our schema; second, we will attempt to present a rationale for these particular kinds of variables; and finally, we will try to link them in ways that meaningfully demonstrate differentiation between conjugal families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the socio-economic differential in the relationship between marital adjustment and wife's employment status. It is said that in low-income families, marital adjustment is better in those cases where the wife is employed than in those cases where she is not employed because working seems "urgently desirable" to both the husband and the wife, and the husband rewards his wife with appreciation when she works. On the other hand, among the upper income levels, there is a "point of diminishing returns" at which the husband begins to resent the employed wife's absence from home and her divided attention more than he appreciates her contribution to the family income. Comparison of average marital adjustment scores revealed that, for the entire sample of the Greensboro housewives, the nonemployed wives had a significantly' higher score than the employed wives. The average score of the 198 nonemployed wives was 5.97 as compared with an average score of 4.80 for the 142 employed wives.

This article examines the relationship between role perception and marital satisfaction. The roles of husband and wife, like any set of culturally related roles, carry a complex pattern of expectations of the responses which are to come from the other. Adjustment to either role is influenced by the consistency with which the other respondsby making the responses called for by the role pattern. Inconsistency in the responses of the other to the individual increases the insecurity of the person in either role since it makes him uncertain of the validity of his own role concept. Whether or not a marital partner responds consistently with the expectations of the other depends on his own preformed concept of his role, his own expectations regarding the reciprocal role of his spouse, his perception of his mate's expectations of him, and the degree of correspondence between the two sets of role concepts and expectations. Marital adjustment is not a function of any single component of perception or even of several taken independently. The major hypothesis of this study is that marital satisfaction is a function of the mutual interaction of these components.

The article focuses on the marital adjustment and marital role definitions of husbands of working and nonworking wives. This article has dealt exclusively with data gathered by mailed questionnaires from a sample of husbands of working and non-working wives. Significant differences in the perception of the circumstances a wife should work were found to exist between these categories of husbands, with the husbands of working wives indicating a more liberal view with regard to the wife's employment, her economic equality and her privilege of individual sex expression Although a majority of the husbands expressed strong reservations about the effect the wife's employment would have upon her traditional role of wife and mother. The movement of the wife into the labor market has obviously not been made without some cost in satisfactory interpersonal adjustment. The husbands of working wives indicates a significantly greater amount of poor marital adjustment. At first glance this finding seems to be contradictory to the democratic attitudes expressed by the husbands of working wives.

The article attempts to supplement and reinforce Winch's theory of complementary needs by offering reliable data from standardized psychological tests, to determine whether married couples are characterized by a high degree of complementariness of needs, and to determine whether there is a positive relationship between the degree of complementariness and marital happiness. The results were expected to suggest a practical application of the theory to marriage and mate selection by stressing the fact that marriage may serve to satisfy certain needs which are difficult to satisfy outside of marriage; shedding light upon the characteristics of an individual who marries or who, does not marry; assisting those who desire to marry in choosing the correct mate; making the difference between romantic and mature love more distinct; and weakening the difference between real and apparent needs. Marital happiness has been discussed in and out of literature for centuries. Recently the study of marital happiness has come under the critical eye of the social scientist. In addition to overall measures of marital success, there have been attempts to measure the degree of adjustment in various dimensions of the relationship and to produce a reliable short marital adjustment prediction test.

This article discusses various issues related to family life in the U.S. Regarding child rearing, the article author views that families in the U.S. are not raising children in a manner calculated to prepare them adequately for adult life in the culture of the U.S. Regarding sex education, the author views that the families in the U.S. have failed to find a satisfactory way of enabling the youth to come to terms comfortably with their sexual nature. Many explanations are forthcoming for this dismal failure, but none of them entirely satisfies the author. The author thinks that parents can and should be free to talk to their older children about sex at an intellectual level. But the real need of young people is to come to terms with their emotional attitudes to sex. Here, parents are the last people who can help the youth with this. Regarding marital adjustments, the author is of the opinion that success and durability of a marriage depend very much on the way in which husband and wife adapt to one another in a complex interlocking pattern in which needs are mutually met and fulfillments mutually achieved, and this is lacking in American families.

This article presents a factor analysis of marital interaction with reference to altruism, role conflict, and marital adjustment. The "adjusted" married person is often characterized as being persistently sympathetic and adaptable toward his mate. In this paper, the article authors question the overall utility of conceptualizing sympathy and adaptability as general factors of the adjusted individual in marriage. Here an attempt is made to treat such behaviors as situation variables linked with specified roles in adjusted marital interaction. In this research the authors have attempted a combined measure of sympathy and adaptability which they call altruism, i.e., the tendency to favor the other. Throughout this research authors have contended that much is gained in the study of the family by assuming that husbands, wives, children, are actors in a social behavior system. The results of this research indicate that one must reject the central hypothesis that altruism is a general factor associated with adjusted interaction in marriage. Altruism, although positively associated with marital adjustment, is not a general factor here and must be interpreted in light of those situational norms dictating sex role prerogatives.

This article focuses on the issue of disenchantment in the later years of marriage and presents a study in this regard. That there is disenchantment after the marriage has endured for several years has not been shown in empirical work previously. In part this is because for such a study longitudinal data are ideal and data of this kind are relatively scarce. But also the emphasis on romanticism in mate selection as the source of disenchantment may have dissuaded researchers from searching for effects well into the marriage. This paper is a report of some of the changes which occurred to the marriages between the early and middle years periods. Sociologists have found signs of disenchantment in the early years of marriage, and the generally accepted link between romanticism and early disenchantment implies, that this should be a time of major reality shocks. Data in this study have demonstrated the existence of loss of adjustment and satisfaction between the early and middle years of marriage. It has been found that men have apparently suffered more disenchantment in the earliest years than have the women. The marital adjustment score shows appreciably more drop from the early to the middle years of marriage than does any other scores.

After many years of the primarily nonsocial interactional correlates of marital adjustment, sociologists are showing increased interest in some more distinctively social-interactional influences on marital adjustment. Communication is the exchange of meaningful symbols, both words and gestures. Communication was defined operationally in terms of subjects' responses to twenty-six questions concerning communication between husbands and wives. Three different communication scores were obtained for each subject. The three communication scores consisted of a barriers to communication score, an empathic communication score, and a total communication score, the sum of the previous two. Several different sets of items were used as empathy tests. The first test involved having each subject rate himself and his mate on a five point scale with respect to each of twenty-one items. The second test again required each subject to answer for himself and to predict the response of his mate to each of twenty-seven items concerning marriage role opinions selected.

The article focuses on the panel analysis of sexual adjustment, marital adjustment and personal growth of husbands. Panel analysis refers to a mode of examining data when identical observations of individuals have been made at two sequential time periods. Its strength lies in the fact that as well as net shifts, such as a general drop in sexual adjustment, one may examine the process by which occurred. The husbands are part of a panel of one thousand engaged couples first studied by Ernest V. Burgess and Paul Wallin between 1937 and 1938. The data treated here are drawn from questionnaires completed by these husbands during roughly the fifth year of marriage and again during roughly the fifteenth year in follow-up studies. Authors presented a series of approaches to the sixteen cell panel table of the sort initiated by sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and developed and reported on by sociologist Bernard Levenson. Personal growth of husbands in marriage and marital adjustment show generally the same kind of interaction, except that personal growth is more a resultant than a cause of marital adjustment.

This article presents a study on premarital petting behavior and marital happiness prediction. A reasonably thorough and complete inventory of the sexual factor in the lives of young women was compiled by selecting items which might be important as being predictive of happiness in marriage. The selection of items was from an empirical basis. The items came from four major sources; items were included which came from opinions, as found in sexual manuals and books on preparation for marriage, which were views as to what sexual attitudes and behaviors are of possible importance for sexual adjustment in marriage; research conclusions indicating certain items to be important in sexual adjustment and happiness in marriage; the counseling experience of the investigator and his former supervisor where factors were identified which appeared to be important in a number of cases in causing their premarital or marital maladjustment; and parts of the Kinsey Sexual History for Males as adapted by this investigator for use with females.

The article examines marital integration as a factor in the parents' agreement on their satisfaction with their child's behavior. Marital integration is regarded here as two fold: the consensus of husband and wife on rank-ordering of values or ends in the family and the effective coordination of roles or means consistent with these values. Agreement between parents on their satisfaction with their child's behavior can be related to the degree of marital integration in two ways. First, the behavior of the child as perceived by the parent may not be consistent with the parent's rank-ordering of values. If the parents disagree markedly on their rank-ordering of domestic values, behavior considered as satisfactory by one parent may or may not be satisfactory to the other. Secondly, if there, is much tension in the marital role system, the different evaluations by the husband and wife concerning the child's behavior may lead to increased resentment or open conflict. In this study, four hypotheses were tested.

The article focuses on the marital adjustment of the mother and the personality development of the child. It makes a study of the relationship between the specific infant training practices and the personality formation and development of the child. The study revealed that none of the particular infant training practices have been related significantly to the personality adjustment of the child. In spite of what the study reveals, some of the psychologists have the view that the single most powerful factor in the personality development of the child is the happiness and stability of the home in which the child has spend the early years of life. This implies that the marital adjustment of the parents, especially of the mother in making the home a peaceful abode, goes a long way in shaping the personality of the child. This has been proven through the investigation of seventy-two problem children and their relationship with their parents, which stated that the parental attitudes exerted a more important influence on the formation of the child's personality than actual events.

This article comments on Willard Waller's article on The Rating and Dating Complex which appeared in the American Sociological Review for October 1937. The heart of Waller's article consists of a description of the rating complex at Penn State College. Waller observed that competition for dates among both men and women students at Penn State was extremely keen, with victory going to those who rated highest on the campus scale of values. The rating complex for men gave primary emphasis to having plenty of money and the things that money can buy. The remaining items in the male complex describe the traditional college play-boy with a good line, smooth manners and appearance, and the ability to dance well. Waller noted that this competitive-materialistic rating system was rather different from what are generally considered to be items predictive of marital adjustment. Waller believed that this rating complex was probably typical of schools similar to Penn State. In the years since his article was published, it has been widely reprinted and quoted as the classic picture of dating on U.S. campuses. It is virtually impossible to test the accuracy of Waller's description of Penn State College in 1929-30.

This article presents a study which investigated the influence of the sex factor on marital relations. Complaints about sex relations tend to reveal positive indications of maladjustment in marriage beyond the level of the physical relations of sexual intercourse. The data showed that those husbands and wives who had one or more complaints about their sex relations with spouse are less well adjusted than those husbands and wives who had no complaints about sex relations with spouse. Having adequate information about sex is considered to be an asset in marriage as far as sexual adjustment is concerned. In an effort to get an impression of background training for sexual adjustment of the 466 couples of this study, the distribution of the sources of their information before they reached eighteen years of age and their evaluation of its adequacy were obtained from their schedules. Fear of pregnancy appears to be a significant factor that makes sexual intercourse less enjoyable. Extramarital sex desire suggests a reflection of marital discord and more significantly so for the wife. Persons who consider themselves as happily married tend to interpret their sexual relations as having a strengthening effect upon their marriage and the reverse tends to be the case with couples who consider their marriages as unhappy.

This article discusses the effects of prostitution on marital sex adjustment. Sexual excesses have no self-corrective or even danger signal. If the man has the price he can indulge his sexual appetite as frequently as he desires. There is no reliable evidence that such excesses are debilitating or will use up the sexual reserves or even reduce one's sexual drive or capacity at least during the early years. This attitude is frequently carried over into marriage with consequences. Few women of the will permit themselves so to be used for any length of time without its resulting in quarreling, sexual maladjustment and not infrequently the use of intercourse as a means of bartering and extracting favors from the husband. The mail, on the other hand, develops the notion that all positions and methods are available to him and he need do is to request them. While this may be true with the prostitute whose only concern is to satisfy her customer and to develop a clientele, this is rarely true of the wife, who should have the right to the determination of the procedure to be employed. Furthermore, men develop with poor coital habits with prostitutes with respect to love-play and this may be carried over to their conjungal relations. In this case, the marriage counselor must be aware of the existence of these differences and attitudes and their implications for marital happiness and unhappiness before he can detect them in a given situation.

This article comments on a research about the unscientific aspects of sex education. The term sex education is not synonymous with sex information. Sex education does not take place in home place, school and community, it is part of the total life experience of every individual. It is the how, rather than the whether or not of sex education which concerns people. Attitudes and behavior regarding sex matters are not separated from other aspects of a person's life experiences. When, by whom and how best a given child or adult should receive certain kinds of factual knowledge is only one aspect of the subject. It has to be geared to an understanding of individual differences and the recognition that sex information should be proffered with a due regard for a young person's own maturation process. Overemphasis and distortions with regard to the relation of sex to total adjustment in marriage is conceded to be unwise, but the acceptance of partner's sex role and sex compatibility generally play a part in successful marriages. Children who live in homes in which their parents have found sex fulfillment as well as other sources of happiness and satisfaction themselves will be more likely to emerge with desirable attitudes toward sex.

This article presents a study which examined economic factors that were assumed to have a positive relationship to marital adjustment. Economic factors have never received sufficient attention in the studies of marital adjustment. Furthermore the research that has been directed to the problem has brought forth not altogether clear results. One reason for this situation has been that there is a very complex relationship between such factors as income and security and the psychological process of adjustment. Another problem is the lack of representativeness of the samples in most previous studies which have concentrated on members of the upper middle class or at least have had upper educational groups represented. Consequently most of the surveys have found relatively little significance in the economic factors in marital adjustment. The economic factors used in the study are: social status, as indicated by location and type of residence, level of education, and occupation; economic security, as shown by such indices as savings, regularity of employment, and lack of debts; and effective economic management, as shown by budgeting and efficient management of the home. These would operate as guiding hypotheses, and, of course, be subject to critical evaluation. and 62 women. There was, in addition, an intermediate group that could be considered neither happy nor unhappy. After selection of the high and low groups, analysis was made of the responses to the various socio-economic items on the questionnaire. The critical ratio technique was employed as a test of significance.

This article presents a study which examined factors making for success of a Chinese family as a family. Four groups were included in the study: a group of 22 farmers living in one valley near Kienyang, Szechuen, that were being studied by doctor Irma Highbaugh; 27 families selected at regular intervals in a market town, Chingyangkung, near Chengtu, for a student thesis; 78 cases representing every third family in a neighborhood of small traders outside the Old South Gate of Chengtu and just west of the West China Union University campus; and a group of 65 Chinese college students in Chengtu, some of whom were refugee students at the time but many of whom came from families that were upper-class before the Sino-Japanese War. Of the factors considered, westernization and socio-economic status are the most effective in explaining the survival rate of children in these Chinese families. They explained 35 percent of the variation. Morality of head and wife, family composition based on descendants living in family, and personality of head and wife were most effective in explaining marriage adjustment. Together these three factors explained 34 percent of the variation. Morality of head and wife by itself explains 37 percent of variation of family unity.

This article presents a study which examined martial adjustment among 466 African American couples in a southern city. The definition of a well-adjusted marriage used in this study is one in which the patterns of behavior of the two persons are mutually satisfying. Adjustment in marriage involves the extent to which agreement and disagreement occur around such important family matters as handling family finances, recreation, religion, demonstration of affection, friends, intimate relations, caring for the baby, table manners, matters of conventionality, philosophy of life, ways of dealing with in-laws and the following additional matters, wife's working, sharing of household tasks and politics. Data were secured from the couples on the extent of their sharing common interests and activities, demonstration of affection and confidence and dissatisfactions with marriage and these data were correlated with the ratings of marital happiness of the couples. It may be significant to note that, regarding manner of settling disagreements, those couples who indicated that disagreements were settled by a mutual give-and-take process rated their marriages happier than those couples who settled their disagreements by either the husband or wife giving in.

This article presents a study which examined the role of interests in the happiness of married couples. When partners independently check interests from an inventory, little or no relationship is found between number of common leisure time interests and adjustment in engagement or marriage. If the ratio is taken of interests possessed by only one divided by interests possessed by both, a slight but definite relationship appears at marriage but not at engagement. Contrary to popular impression, marriage on the basis of leisure time enjoyments at engagement apparently affords little better prospect, if any, of successful marriage than where the number of such common interests is ignored. When studying interests and motivations one by one, the findings are illuminating, although small in size and not consistently revealed at both engagement and marriage nor for both men and women. In general, the pattern is that mutuality of interest in home, children, romantic love, sexual relations of the couple and religion is more prevalent among happy, well adjusted couples. But mutuality of interest in community activity, and making money or comfort and ease tends to accompany poor adjustment, at least at engagement.

This article focuses on the indirect assessment of marital adjustment. This article also highlights the negative aspects of the direct and indirect types of scale. On the basis of the most recent studies on the indirect assessment of marital adjustment, there have been several findings. Although the validity of the indirect scales is not as high as that of most standard direct scales the reliability has been found to be consistently higher. Derived indirect measures may provide us with information concerning marital adjustment which it is relatively impossible for the more direct scale to obtain. Derived indirect measures yield more uniform and more normal distribution of scores on the continuum of marital adjustment, indicating less susceptibility of the indirect measures to examinee manipulation. The more indirect type of scale for the assessment of marital adjustment warrants further study because: it is more reliable; it gives us a more normal distribution of scores; it is less subject to the common intruding variables of the direct scale--for example, examinee manipulation, examinee antagonism, differential motivation; and it is simple, economical, easier to administer, and easier to score.

This article provides information on a study which comparatively used the California Test of Personality and the Burgess-Cottrell-Wallin schedule in predicting martial adjustment. Marriage counseling is one of the recent significant developments in the field of interpersonal relations, as of August 1951. The American Institute of Family Relations at Los Angeles, California established in 1930, was the first separate U.S. agency providing this service. Since that time numerous organizations and services have sprung up in the centers and marriage counseling is moving toward professionalization. One of the recent innovations in this area is the establishment of marriage counseling bureaus and clinics in college and university settings. A few of these clinics are in operation and are influencing hundreds of students, yet little is known about them or the techniques and resources which are utilized in the counseling process. Tests, marriage prediction schedules and adjustment scales are utilized as important tools in many marriage counseling centers. Popular examples of these are the Burgess-Cottrell-Wallin Marriage Prediction Schedule, Burgess-Cottrell-Wallin Marriage Adjustment Form, Terman's Marriage Scale, and numerous tests sponsored by in the book, How to Pick a Mate.

This article presents an evaluation of marriage prediction tests. In 1938 physician Lewis M. Terman reported the results of his study of the marital happiness of 792 couples. The following year, Burgess and Cottrell published the findings of their study of the happiness of 526 marriages. From each of these studies emerged a scale or test to predict the likelihood of happiness in marriage. At the Pennsylvania State College tests were administered in 1939 to single individuals and engaged couples. These tests included the Terman Prediction Scale of Marital Happiness, the original form of the Adams-Lepley Personal Audit, and later the Guilford-Martin Personnel Inventory I. By following up these persons after marriage, it was hoped that certain of these items might prove predictive of success or failure in marriage. One major problem was to determine a criterion of what constituted happiness or adjustment in marriage. As early as 1929, G. V. Hamilton had used some 13 questions to appraise marital satisfaction. The Terman and Burgess-Cottrell items for measuring marital adjustment, with minor exceptions, agreed closely. By combining all three of these techniques and adding certain questions specifically dealing with sexual adjustment, it was felt that a reasonably good index of marital happiness would result.

The article presents a study which aims to explore the potentialities of the indirect Kirkpatrick and compared it with a more direct scale, the Burgess Marriage Adjustment Form in assessing marital adjustment. The study reveals that Kirkpatrick scale is more reliable than Burgess Marital Adjustment Form since it provides a more uniform and normal distribution of scores. In addition, Kirkpatrick scale is less subject to the common intruding variables of simple, economical, easier to score and administer. Furthermore, it was concluded that the Kirkpatrick Scale of Family Interests warrants increased attention in the statistical and logical analysis of the data and found to be valuable in the study of human relationships.

The article reports on a study which examines the criticality of family interests in marital adjustments in the U.S. Judges from the sociology and psychology departments of the Ohio State University were called to evaluate the 60 interest items of the Kirkpatrick Scale of Family Interests. The author notes that the family interests that were judged significant to marital adjustment were in agreement with empirical findings. In addition, the traditional family functions were judged less crucial to marital adjustment than the highly emphasized modern companionship and security functions.

The article cites a study that aims to test homogamous and complementary need theories of marital choice between newlyweds and middle-aged married couples. The Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, Bass Famous Sayings Test, and a marital adjustment scale devised by K. M. Wallace were administered to 48 middle-aged married couples and 20 newlywed couples. Results favor a homogamous theory of need pattern choice for nonnewlyweds. Findings for newlyweds, on the other hand, is believed to be entirely inconclusive in the sense that neither the homogamous nor heterogenous theory is supported.

Short-term counseling of engaged couples in small groups has proved to be a worthwhile method of educating couples for marriage and preparing them for its stresses and satisfactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines a few hypotheses or theories which have to do with mate-selection. With the assistance of parts of these the article in addition, treats some aspects of marital adjustment. Among the old ways of thinking about mate-selection,there are the conceptions of homogamy and heterogamy. The hypothesis of homogamy commonly says that the choice of a spouse will be done so that the spouses are alike as much as possible. The assumption that one tends to choose a spouse who is as different from oneself as possible is consequently called the hypothesis of heterogamy. Thus generally drawn up, the two hypotheses contradict each other. Much research has been undertaken to test the two hypotheses. There is no lack of support for the former one. It has been found that according to many social characteristics, e.g. religious confession, social class, education, and intelligence, the spouses tend to be equal. Moreover, with regard to social psychological characteristics, interests, attitudes etc., the hypothesis of homogamy seems to be adequate.

This article recognizes group structure and interpersonal creativity as factors which reduce errors in the prediction of marital adjustment. The need to deal systematically with the problem of interpersonal inventiveness or creativity arose in this field as a consequence of the empirical attempts to account for family survival during major social changes such as wars and depressions. From a theoretical point of view it was argued that relational measures of interpersonal abilities which explicitly take into account the structure of the family were better than those which ignored group structure. More broadly, the foregoing analysis suggests that in order to assess the effects of interpersonal abilities in the marriage situation, the measure should reflect the structure of the group. It is only in a special type of structure (additive structure) or in situations where structure is unimportant that the investigator can safely use individual measures or the average of several individual scores to index the interpersonal ability.

In the search for factors associated with marital adjustment, two conclusions are pre-eminent: the number of items associated with marital adjustment is large, and no one item is of outstanding significance. The second conclusion is, of course, a logical consequence of the first, for if a large number of causes of a phenomenon are known to exist, no one cause is likely to be very important. In past researches of factors in marital adjustment, attention has been directed toward items of cultural background, group participation, patterns of affection, sex practices and attitudes, and economic status, as well as certain personality traits. There is growing recognition of the importance of values as variables in human behavior. Since values loom particularly large in marriage, it seems appropriate to study the relation of values to marital adjustment. For this study, a list of active Registered Nurses in Leon County, Florida, was prepared in November 1936. Interviews were conducted by married women, using an instrument which was largely self-administered, consisting of three sections. The first consisted of background questions relating to the nurse and, if she was married, to her husband also. Although some resistance to the marital adjustment schedule was anticipated, there was only one refusal because of sensitivity to certain of the questions.

This article gives the following three conclusions relative to a comparison of marital adjustment and prediction in the United States and Sweden. The marital-adjustment test which separated happily married from divorced in the senior author's study of predicting marital adjustment, in Indiana also discriminated between adjusted and unadjusted in a community in Sweden. About two thirds of the marital-prediction items which were statistically significant in the Indiana study and which were included in the Swedish study differentiated between adjusted and unadjusted couples in Sweden. A few differences were discovered in the comparison of the two societies. The marital-adjustment test which discriminated between happily married and divorced in the cultural context of Indiana also functioned in the cultural context of an urban community in Sweden. It distinguished between couples who, on the basis of independent criteria, had different positions along the marital adjustment continuum. The marital-adjustment test used in the two studies included items on agreements and disagreements of husband and wife, satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the marriage, and the extent of common interests and activities.

The article focuses on the issue of adjustment in marriage between interethnic groups on the Isthmus of Panama. The two situational factors affecting the marriage between the two ethnic groups are-the intergroup situation and the diverse ethnic norms of the groups. The native Panamanian ingroup has relatively low prestige and good organization on both informal-primary and formal-secondary levels as compared to the American outgroup, which is poorly organized on informal-primary but well organized on formal-secondary levels. It was also found that the short courtships among couples do not result in difficulties related to adjustment. The data also shows that Panamanian-American spouses are happiest when the Panamanian wives belong to urban areas.

The article discusses the impact of marital adjustment on social class and social mobility. It focuses on the position of marriage as a system for equality of status in a stratified social order. It discusses the existence of social strata and family as an unit in the class structure. It analyzes whether the marriage of a man and woman of different social levels result in the shift of status for one or both of them. It is stated that the actual class levels of the spouses at marriage determines the success of the marriage.

The article investigates the role played by women's physical attractiveness in marital happiness. It is reported that physical attractiveness in women can be positively linked with marriage adjustment since attractive women can be relatively free from inferiority feeling. Also, it can be negatively linked as attractive women may frustrate themselves because of narcissism, childishness and absence of concern for virtues. The cooperator subject reporting method obtains information concerning subjects from cooperators indirectly. Several tables are also presented depicting age and appearance ratings of well-adjusted and poorly-adjusted couples.

Social measurement is used as a tool to help evaluate intimate personal relationships in the field of marital adjustment. So far the direct approach has been used almost exclusively in measuring marital adjustment. It is assumed as a working hypothesis that the indirect approach promises a more reliable and valid tool for marital measurement than the direct approach. Direct, specific, intimate questions are often useless because they will not be answered honestly or because they antagonize the examinee. The direct approach, because it relies heavily upon such explicit questions, is satisfactory only in those situations in which the examinee is cooperative and relatively disinterested in his score. The indirect approach warrants increased attention in the social sciences as a tool to aid in the measurement of social phenomena especially under adverse conditions where examinee score manipulation must be guarded against. This article indicates that indirect approach can overcome score variations resulting from individual differences in motivation; that it reduces the possibility of conscious test score manipulation by the examinee; and that it decreases the tendency to engender antagonism. As to reliability, it can equal the direct approach, and in validity may well equal it. It has all the advantages of the direct approach from the viewpoint of the ease and economy with which it can be administered and interpreted.