Spouses as observers of the events in their relationship.

Abstract

This study concerns itself with the reliability of spouses as observers of the behaviors that occur in their own marital relationships. Distressed and nondistressed couples were paid to collect data in the home on 21 consecutive evenings. Once per day, spouses completed a behavioral checklist in which they independently indicated which of 409 behaviors had occurred during the preceding 24 hours. Consensus was measured by calculating both percentage agreement and kappa statistics. The average agreement for all couples was 47.8%. Across the entire checklist, nondistressed couples exhibited significantly greater consensus than did distressed couples, based on both percentage agreement and kappa. However, when comparisons were made on selected individual categories of behavior, differences between distressed and nondistressed couples held up only for percentage agreement. Suggestive evidence was presented that inferential items were less reliably coded than noninferential items. Discussion of these results centers on the implications for viewing spouse-collected data as observational data, possible innovations in data collection procedure that could result in more reliable recording, and theoretical implications of the low rate of consensus between spouses.

Factor similarity of the Conflict Tactics Scales across samples, spouses, and sites: Issues and implications

“…Given the problem of modest agreement between spouses in reports of marital behaviors in general (Jacobson and Moore, 1981), and marital aggression in particular (Browning and Dutton, 1986;Jouriles and O'Leary, I985;Szinovacz, I983), Hornang et aL's (t98i) revision is preferable because it provides self-and spouse ratings of marital aggression. Thus, in the present study, averaged couple data (i.e., husbands' self-rating and wives' ratings of the husband; wives' self-ratings and husbands' ratings of his wife) were used in generating separate indices of husbands' and wives' aggression.…”

Families Under Stress: An Assessment of Data, Theory, and Research on Marriage and Divorce in the Military

“…For example, self-reports tend to underrepresent domestic violence, mental health problems, and income, and they may overrepresent others (e.g., combat exposure). Research on marriage, in particular, has long noted that spouses are imperfect reporters of events in their own relationships (Jacobson and Moore, 1981). Moreover, to the extent that independent variables and outcomes are both measured via self-reports (often on the same assessment instrument), common method vari-…”

Reactivity and unreliability of husbands as participant observers

“…Participant observations collected by spouses have frequently been employed in studies investigating the outcome of behavioral marital therapy (Jacobson, 1977(Jacobson, , 1979Margolin and Weiss, 1978) and in studies examining the perceptions and behaviors of distressed versus nondistressed couples (e.g., Jacobson and Moore, 1981). Relatedly, the reactivity and reliability of spouse observation have been examined.…”

“…In an investigation of reliability, when spouses were asked to record at the end of the day whether their husbands or wives had performed particular behaviors in the preceding 24 hr, Jacobson and Moore (1981) reported that spouses agreed with each other on the occurrences of particular behaviors only 47.8%. Similarly, when spouses were asked to complete the Spouse Observation checklist in a laboratory setting (based on the previous 24 hr), the occurrence agreement between spouses was 48°70 (Christensen and Nies, 1980).…”