(Updated 8/29/22) This is a list of free marriage and relationship assessment tools to use with couples in marriage and family counseling for assessing relationship satisfaction/expectations, attachment styles, communication, domestic violence/sex addiction, and more.
Marital Satisfaction Inventory Free Download
Download File: https://shurll.com/2vGO9p
The RDAS is a reliable and valid inventory for measuring marital quality in infertile patients. Further validation studies are needed to generalize the underlying structure of the scale in various populations.
The KMSS is an ultra-brief, 3-item, self-administered inventory that measures marital satisfaction [29]. This scale is developed by Schumm et al. among sample of married mothers in 1983 [29]. All items are scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 to 7. Total scores can range from 3 to 21, with higher scores indicating more marital satisfaction. The Persian version of KMSS has been shown to have sound psychometric properties in infertile patients [30].
The CSI-4 is an ultra-brief self-administered inventory derived from the original 32 item CSI (CSI-32) that measures relationship satisfaction [31]. This scale is developed by Funk and Rogge among online sample of respondents in USA in 2007 [31]. The first item is scored on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 0 to 6, and the other three elements are scored on a 6-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 to 5. Total scores can range from 0 to 21, with higher scores indicating more relationship satisfaction.
Convergent validity of the scale was confirmed by strong correlations between RDAS scores and scores on the RAS, KMSS, and CSI-4 instruments. These findings are following the previous research, which found that the RDAS scores were correlated to other measures of marital quality and satisfaction [24, 47, 48]. These correlations also tended to be larger than correlations with measures of anxiety, depression, and stress.
In sum, the RDAS is a reliable and valid inventory for measuring marital quality in infertile patients. Furthermore, the CFA finding provides additional support for the three-factor structure of the RDAS and use of the subscales as distinct variables. Nevertheless, future studies should examine the psychometric properties of RDAS in diverse populations, particularly its test-retest reliability.
Objective: Marital satisfaction is considered as satisfaction with a marital relationship on which the presence of a child has different effects. Concerns about a childfree life and its effect on marital satisfaction in infertile couples are very critical. Therefore, this study was intended to characterize and compare concerns about a childfree lifestyle and the need for parenthood and their relationship with marital satisfaction in infertile couples.
Results: The mean scores for concern about a childfree lifestyle and the need for parenthood in women were significantly higher than in men. The variables rejection of a childfree lifestyle and the need for parenthood were respectively predictors of marital satisfaction in women and men.
Conclusion: Since marital satisfaction in infertile couples is affected by their feelings about having a child and becoming a parent, it is therefore suggested that appropriate counseling be provided in supportive healthcare programs for infertile couples to promote their marital satisfaction.
The present global study attempts to verify the links between marital satisfaction and the number of children as well as its moderators in an international sample. Data for the study was obtained from our published dataset and included 7178 married individuals from 33 countries and territories. We found that the number of children was a significant negative predictor of marital satisfaction; also sex, education, and religiosity were interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction, while there were no interactions with economic status and individual level of individualistic values. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children in several, non-Western countries and territories.
Citation: Kowal M, Groyecka-Bernard A, Kochan-Wójcik M, Sorokowski P (2021) When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey. PLoS ONE 16(4): e0249516.
Importantly, all those variables were investigated almost exclusively in Western countries. Meanwhile, social norms build, inter alia, a wide context of specific rules about family, or parenting and marriage relationship, which are customized to values they promote [9, 28]. The criteria for a satisfying marriage may vary and rely on a larger cultural context, for instance, whether the society promotes more collectivistic or individualistic values [49]. If individuals profess collectivistic norms, they are more concentrated on mutual help, loyalty, and cooperation in intra-group relationships, and because of preferring more group than individual needs, as well as getting help from relatives with children rearing, this way of life might increase their marital satisfaction [9]. As most Western countries are extremely individualistic, we aimed to re-examine the link between marital satisfaction and the number of children also in non-Western and collectivistic cultures.
Considering the above, we hypothesized that less satisfied with their marriages may be parents with more children and facing more material hardship, mothers, less religious, and those with less individualistic values. We had no prior hypotheses regarding links between the marital satisfaction, children and education. We utilize a large, cross-national dataset in the hope to obtain more generalizable results than previous studies did and provide empirical test to mechanisms suggested by classical theories informing marital satisfaction studies.
In order to assess whether the number of children predicts marital satisfaction, we ran a series of multilevel linear models. All predictors were grand-mean centered. As the first step, we ran a baseline model, ignoring the data hierarchical structure with number of children, sex, age, marriage duration, religiosity, education, material situation and individualism as predictors of marital satisfaction. In the next step (model 2), we clustered data in countries and included random intercept. In the third model, we introduced interaction terms (number of children * religiosity / education / sex / economic status / individual level individualistic values). In the final model, we included random intercept and random slopes, hence, we allowed both intercept and slopes to vary across countries. We compared the models using -2 log likelihood (-2LL) with lower values indicating better models. We estimated effects using a maximum likelihood estimator.
Next, in order to break down the interactions, we ran a series of simple slope analyses to examine the relationship between the number of children and marital satisfaction at mean value and +/- 1 SD of moderators, controlling for other variables. The results showed that there was no effect of the low (-1 SD) level of education on the number of children and marital satisfaction (β = -0.007, t = -0.401, p = 0.690), yet, there were significant effects of the high and mean levels of education (β = -0.030, t = -1.974, p = 0.055, β = -0.054, t = -3.012, p = 0.003, respectively). These results suggest that for a group of high and mean education, the higher the number of children, the lower the marital satisfaction (Fig 2).
Breaking down the interaction between the number of children and religiosity revealed that in participants at high (+1 SD) level of religiosity the number of children did not significantly predict marital satisfaction (β = -0.010, t = -0.562 p = 0.576), however this relationship was almost significant and negative in participants at mean level of religiosity (β = -0.030, t = -1.974, p = 0.055), and significant at low (-1 SD) level of religiosity (β = -0.051, t = -2.811, p = 0.006) (Fig 3). It implies that among respondents with a low level of religiosity, the higher the number of children, the lower the marital satisfaction. Among women, the relationship between marital satisfaction and number of children was significant and negative (β = -0.050, t = -2.896, p = 0.005) but it was not significant for men (β = -0.011, t = -0.594, p = 0.555) (Fig 4).
Our findings are in line with other research [26, 28], which showed that the number of children can be considered as a global, negative correlate of marital satisfaction. Even though some previous studies found that being a parent (as compared to non-parents) is linked to increased overall well-being [1, 2] (and that there are pronounced, cross-cultural differences within this matter, e.g., between American and Chinese adults [62]), the current analyses seem to refute the notion that such beneficial influence of parenthood extends to marital satisfaction. Moreover, as much greater share of variance can be attributed to individuals than to countries, one can reasonably conclude that marital satisfaction depends more on the individual characteristics than on the values promoted in the country. At the same time, we found that the association between marital satisfaction and the number of children vary substantially across countries, what necessitates further investigations.
On the other hand, in the present analysis we used a large-scale sample database from different regions of the world. All participants answered the same questionnaires, which tried to capture numerous important variables, previously shown to correlate with marital satisfaction. The data was collected in the same period of time and originated in different regions of the world. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children and variables that are frequently hypothesized to influence this relationship (i.e., sex, religiosity, age, education, level of individualism, material situation, and marriage duration) in several, non-Western countries and territories. Such insight may be especially important when considering the importance of marital satisfaction on health and well-being both of spouses [75] and their children [76]. 2ff7e9595c
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