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This study examined gender differences in marital satisfaction using the multidimensional marital inventory ENRICH. Contrary to previous research, the results indicated that men are somewhat more satisfied with their marriages than women. The findings also suggest that religion is a more important part of the marriage for men, whereas women esposed egalitarian roles to a greater extent. A significant interaction was found between marital distress and gender on the Sexual Relationship, Communication, Parenting and Children, and Equalitarian Roles scales, indicating that these areas may be particularly important in distressed couples. The differences in husbands' and wives' marital satisfaction found in this study are consistent with research suggesting that men obtain greater mental health benefits from marriage than do women. The explanation of the obtained gender differences are discussed with regard to measurement issues, sampling procedures, and power and task inequities. Sampling and differences in marital tasks and power are cited as the best explanations of the findings.

Teaching communication skills is one of the most common approaches used to improve couples' relationships. These skills are typically presented as content-free techniques that are value neutral. Yet, marital therapists frequently see that exercising communication skills, particularly in conflict situations, can be quite difficult, requiring personal strengths such as self-restraint, courage, generosity, justice, and good judgment. These personal strengths are virtues that are presupposed in communication skills and are necessary for their successful use. The traditional attempt to see marital therapy as value neutral has made it difficult to recognize the importance of these virtues. Therapists might be more effective if they could help couples to identify and cultivate underlying character strengths necessary for good communication. This paper presents an Aristotelian reading of virtues in marriage that can broaden our understanding of marriage and open new avenues for helping couples.

A sample of 71 cardiac patients was assessed using the Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scales (Wallston, Wallston, & DeVellis, 1978) and a measure of outcome expectancies specific to cardiac recovery. Variables included life stress, chronicity of the heart disease, and the level of symptoms reported. Appraisals of control were unrelated to psychological distress when contextual variables were statistically controlled. An interactive effect between the level of life stress and perception of control was significantly associated with psychological distress. These results provide additional support for the inclusion of contextual variables in research on the effects of control appraisals.

An interactional approach to using standardized self-report instruments as part of the assessment of couples entering marital therapy or enrichment is described. This approach to assessment emphasizes the recursive relationship between professionals and clients in developing an understanding of dyadic patterns. Marital inventories can fulfill a number of functions in marital therapy and enrichment, including promoting hope, developing a relationship orientation to marital issues, identifying problem areas, promoting discussion, confronting couple myths, matching clients to services, intervention planning and placement, outcome evaluation, and preventive services. Finally, the most prominent and well-researched measures of marital satisfaction, instability, and intimacy are presented and evaluated regarding how well they can fulfill these functions. The assessment of couples in marital therapy and marital enrichment can provide essential information for planning and carrying out interventions. Identifying a couple's particular problem areas early can allow the issues to be addressed in a shorter period of time and assist in conceptualizing those problem areas, thereby promoting an individualized and systematic approach to each couple. The manner in which the assessment is conducted also has important implications for the therapeutic relationship and how the couple makes use of the information. This article will suggest an interactive and systemically oriented application of marital inventories that recognizes the value of educating the couple about their relationship and making use of the assessment as an intervention in itself. A review of the clinical use of marital inventories is appropriate due to the large volume of recent research validating a new generation of marital inventories. It has become feasible to fulfill a variety of assessment functions using currently available marital inventories. Such a process can save time and enhance the focus and success of marital therapy and enrichment. Standardized assessment procedures can assist the professional in (a) promoting hope for a positive outcome, (b) developing a relationship (rather than blaming) focus, (c) identifying problem areas in their relationship utilizing specific assessment data, (d) promoting focused and productive discussion of relevant issues, (e) confronting couple myths, (f) assisting in appropriately matching clients to services, (g) evaluating the ongoing progress of the therapy or enrichment, (h) evaluating outcome and termination planning, and (i) facilitating enrichment and prevention. The purposes of this article are to discuss the usefulness of an interactional approach to standardized marital assessment and to familiarize professionals working with couples with the best of the current instruments. An interactional view of marital assessment using self-report measures will be presented in the first section of the article. This will include a discussion of the therapeutic, assessment, outcome evaluation, and preventive uses of such measures. Second, marital adjustment, satisfaction, commitment, instability, communication, and intimacy inventories will be discussed. Third, these inventories will be evaluated for their usefulness in fulfilling the functions of marital assessment discussed in this article.

In order to determine the predictive validity of the premarital inventory PREPARE, this study assessed the utility of PREPARE in predicting marital success. A 3-year follow-up study was conducted with 164 couples who took PREPARE during their engagement. As hypothesized, it was found that satisfied couples scored significantly higher on the inventory than dissatisfied couples, divorced couples, and couples who cancelled their marriage. It was also hypothesized and found that dissatisfied married couples did not differ significantly from couples who cancelled their marriage or those who divorced. Using discriminant analysis, it was found that the PREPARE scores from 3 months before marriage could predict with 80-90% accuracy which couples were separated and divorced from those that were happily married. These findings not only demonstrate the predictive validity of PREPARE, but its potential utility in identifying high-risk couples who could benefit from more intensive premarital counseling.

To assess the validity and clinical utility of the marital inventory ENRICH, discriminant validity study was conducted using a national sample of 5039 married couples. The sample was randomly split in order to form a cross-validation group. ENRICH is a multidimensional scale and two types of analysis were conducted to assess to value of these various scales. Results from discriminant analysis indicated that using either the individual scores or couples’ scores, happily married couples could be discriminated from unhappily married couples with 85-95% accuracy. These results were crossvalidated with a second sample. Using regression analysis, it was clearly demonstrated that background factors account for little of the variance in discriminating happy from unhappily married couples compared to their relationship dynamics, i.e., scale scores. All ENRICH scales except equalitarian roles proved significant, indicating the validity of a multidimensional inventory. This paper focuses on the validity and multidimensionality of the ENRICH marital inventory (Olson, Fournier, & Druckman, 1983) which was designed for marital therapists and researchers. Clinicians require a diagnostic tool that is reliable, valid, clinically useful, and that can provide a multidimensional perspective on couples coming for therapy. Researchers require a scientifically sound scale that will discriminate between various types of couples. Marital satisfaction and related concepts are studied more often than any other concepts in the field (Spanier & Lewis, 1980). This research interest has received empirical justification in recent studies (Campbell, Converse & Rodgers, 1976; Glenn & Weaver, 1981; Olson, McCubbin, Barnes, Larsen, Muxen & Wilson, 1983; Weingarten, 1985) which have demonstrated that marital satisfaction is the most prominent contributor to global satisfaction for married people in the United States. The majority of previous studies validating marital inventories have been limited in four important ways. First, sample sizes were usually too small to adequately assess the scales and at the same time cross-validate their findings. Second, these studies have often failed to control for background factors which could confound the findings. Third