Purpose: Children of divorced parents seem to have more divorces when they themselves marry. I f an "intergenerational transmission" effect exists, differences in attitude should exist even before marriage. What differences in attitude exist, if any, between the offspring of divorced parents and of intact-happy parents? Procedure: The Anacleto Marital Attitude Inve ntory (AMAI) was developed with 92 Likert- scaled items . Internal consist e ncy (.88), Reliability (.81), and Concurrent Validity (.65) for the total test as well as for 8 subscales we r e judged satisfac t o ry. Higher scores show more healthy attitudes. The AMAI was administered to 353 single adults drawn from a community college, a unive rsity, and trade schools in the Central Valley of California. They were adult single offspring of (1) divorced, (2) "intact-happy", (3) "intact-unhappy" parents, classified from questionnaire answers. It was hypothesized that Group 2 would have healthier attitudes than Group 1, Group 2 healthier attitudes than Group 3 and Group 1 healthie r attitudes than Group 3. Findings: Contrary to predictions, Group 1 had s ignificantly healthie r attitudes than Group 2 on the total AMAI and the Sex attitudes subscale. The se diffe r e nces were not str o ng, though s ignificant at the .001 level because of the large N's. Still this contrast to the hypotheses and previous literature invites further study. Explanations for these findings include: parents having custody teaching appropriate and healthy attitudes toward marriage; interest and self-sought education about marr iage by the children, to avoid the dissolutions suffered by their parents; more rational, cognitive understanding of marriage shown on the AMAI which may or may not translate into improved relationships. Hope for a better r elationship may prompt this population to seek divorce more readily. Stronger diffe r e nces, also true at the .001 l evel, were found by sex for the AMAI as a whole, on 6 of the 8 scale comparisons. Females were found to have healthier attitudes than males . Sex differences such as these may s uggest socialization variations . Marital relationships potentially could suffe r from such differences. No int eraction effects for Group status by sex were found.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:pacific.edu/oai:scholarlycommons.pacific.edu:uop_etds-3993 |
| Date | 01 May 1984 |
| Creators | Anacleto, Dorothy Lucille |
| Publisher | Scholarly Commons |
| Source Sets | University of the Pacific |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations |
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