Matthew Cook and Dr. Timothy Smith, Department of Counseling Psychology and Education
It is generally understood and accepted that marriage decreases one’s mortality risk, or in other words, increases their life expectancy. The purpose of this research project is to quantify or measure the effect that a person’s marital status has on their risk for mortality. The question that it seeks to answer is as follows “How much does being married affect the length of life compared to being not married, specifically, being single, widowed, or divorced?” This project started several years ago by looking at the effect that social support had on mortality. This is a subset of that research question, delving specifically into the marital relationship. Future research, which is currently underway in Dr. Smith’s and Dr. Holt-Lunstad’s lab, will address the important issue of marital quality and mortality: answering the question “Does the quality of the marital relationship affect the risk of mortality?”
If I have learned anything from this project, it is that quality research takes a lot of time, effort, and verification. The meta-analysis team has gone through each of the more than three hundred journal articles several times as new problems and techniques were discovered and developed, respectively. This report was to include final analyses of the data but last-minute errors were discovered and another verification process was initiated. The errors have ranged from inconsistencies among coding partnerships to technical failures to statistical errors. Because the project has taken so long to complete, errors initially arose when important information did not get passed on to incoming team members. That was discovered during the established verification process as well as during the weekly team meetings. Computer malfunctions and an error in the statistical formula also forced us to adjust and backtrack a little bit. It is more important to postpone deadlines than to have an incorrect data set.
Preliminary analyses were performed for the purpose of creating a poster for two BYU research conferences, the Mary Lou Fulton Poster Conference and the David O. McKay School of Education Mentored Research Conference. The poster (seen in Figure 1) included preliminary results which indicated that married individuals were forty six percent more likely to survive than those who were not married. The final analyses, which should be completed by March of 2013, are not expected to deviate significantly from these preliminary results. According to current results, being married is similar to being a non-smoker, abstaining from alcohol, and maintaining an appropriate weight in its effect on mortality. It is a significant finding, and one that we hope will be a driving force for the protection and promotion of the sacred marital relationship.
We feel grateful to have taken part in such an important research topic, one that sheds light on the benefits of a healthy marriage relationship. It is our hope that the results will be used in multiple areas to promote and defend marriage, and to better educate the public about its lesser-known benefits. Those involved in public policy, healthcare, religion, education, and other areas can find practical application of the studies’ results. The follow-up study on marital quality is expected to further support the importance of having a healthy marriage.
This project was made possible with the help and expertise of my mentor, Dr. Timothy Smith, and Dr. Julianne Holt-Lunstad, as well as donor, Alan Harker, and undergraduate students, David Stephenson, Chris Badger, Mark Baker, Tyler Harris, Trent Heiner, Blake McDowell, Steve Jennings, Yoo Shepherd, Molly Mitchell, Clayton Powers, and Trisha Merkle.
Figure 1 – Poster presented in research conferences at Brigham Young University in 2012. Preliminary analyses of data indicate that marriage has a profound effect on mortality, similar to other well known risk factors such as smoking and alcoholism.