The purpose of this study was to determine how relational communication changes over the life-span of couples comprising the cohorts of exclusive dating (6 or more months of exclusive dating), engaged, early married (married less than 5 years), middle married (5 to 19.11 years), and late married (20 or more years) dyads. The present study is the first to measure relational communication with both premarital and marital dyads, and to include couples with and without children. / A convenience sample of 130 couples, across the five cohorts, were administered a slightly modified version of The Marital Communication Inventory (MCI). The results revealed a significant difference in relational communication between the engaged and the middle married couples, and between the engaged and late married couples. The trend was high levels of communication in the engaged cohort, decreasing over the life-span, with the middle married group possessing the lowest level of communication. No differences between the genders were found within a cohort. However, the females in the engaged group evidenced both the highest and the lowest scores on the MCI. / While couples differed along the life-span, correlational data indicated that the longer the couple had been together, the more agreement existed on how they communicated as a couple. Suggestions are made for the practitioner/researcher to focus more on correlational analysis. Methodological concerns for continued research in this area are also discussed. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-03, Section: A, page: 1095. / Major Professor: Curtis H. Krishef. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76875 |
| Contributors | Pennell, Robert Clark., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 143 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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