Factorial structure and correlates of marital adjustment in a Japanese population: A community study

✍ Scribed by Toshinori Kitamura; Mayumi Watanabe; Masako Fujino; Mitsuka Aoki; Chiaki Ura; Shigeki Fujihara

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1995
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 570 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0090-4392
• DOI: 10.1002/1520-6629(199504)23:2<117::aid-jcop2290230203>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

A total of 146 married inhabitants (67 men and 79 women) in a provincial city of Japan were interviewed to examine marital adjustment and its psychosocial determinants. Fifteen items of the Short Marital Adjustment Test (Locke & Wallace, 1959) (LWT), a self-rating questionnaire, were transformed into a semi-structured interview together with two new items. Factor analysis yielded five factors which were interpreted as dyadic consensus, satisfaction, flexibility, home-loving, and interest-sharing. Better marital adjustment in women was correlated with higher standard of living, lower neuroticism, and a more caring father, whereas in men it was correlated with lower psychoticism and a more caring mother. Longitudinal studies are needed to throw more light on the determinants of marital adjustment.

Marital adjustment has long been a topic of interest to community and family psychology (Sabatelli, 1988). However, this concept has been criticized as being heterogeneous because it encompasses, besides the quality of the marriage, subjective satisfaction and happiness with the marriage, complaints, intimacy, and social support from the partner. Any measure of marital adjustment should therefore be examined in terms of its internal consistency, both conceptually and empirically, before it is ap-