Matt Thorpe and Dr. Randal Day – Marriage, Family and Human Development
Social scientists developed the Oral History Interview and Coding system as a measure of marital satisfaction in couples. Due to the individual nature of its theoretical underpinnings, the system may rate satisfaction equally well through an individual versus a couple interview. This hypothesis is tested by the present study. At present, qualitative results suggest both new theoretical possibilities and topics for future lines of research.
The Oral History Interview and Coding System are used by family scientists to gather information about the dynamics of a marriage relationship. Krokoff (1984) developed the Oral History Interview to collect couple self reports of marital stability. Later Buehlman, Gottman & Katz (1992) created a coding system to quantify and analyze interview data. A 1992 longitudinal study tested the predictive value of coding dimensions on marital stability vs. dissolution. The results were impressive, correctly predicting marital stability with 94% accuracy after seven years. Subsequent studies confirmed the strength of the Oral History Interview and Coding system, and demonstrated versatility – the procedure has been successfully utilized with newly-weds (Carrère et al, 2000), with dating couples, and across cultural boundaries.
So far these tools have been limited to gathering data from couple interviews only. However, the theory behind the interview suggests that it may serve equally well in collecting information about individual perceptions of a relationship. My study tests the hypothesis that an interview with a husband or wife individually will yield a marital adjustment rating that is not significantly different from that obtained with a couple interview.
Individual interviews after this fashion may hold important implications for researchers as well as clinicians. Orchestrating interviews with husbands and wives together is a notoriously difficult problem for family researchers. Furthermore, many family situations make a couple interview impossible. This study was born out of the problems of gathering detailed information about the relationships of incarcerated fathers in Professor Day’s Prison Dads study. If equally viable information about a relationship may be gained through an individual interview these kinds of logistical obstacles may be avoided. Clinical therapists could also benefit from the development of an established and tested method for exploring a marital dynamic based on the report of one client.
This study is still in progress. We have administered the interview to ten couples recruited from BYU married student housing, once as a couple and again as individuals. Half the group performed the couple interview first, and the other half performed the individual interview first. Another ten couples will be interviewed in order to achieve our target sample size before formal statistical analysis is performed.
We have been pleased, however, with some of the insights we have gained through the interviews in a qualitative sense. For example, while the study was designed to test specifically for similarities between individual and couple interviews some of the differences we encountered in the interviews have been equally intriguing. One such difference is the way specific narratives take shape in the presence or absence of a partner. When comparing the interviews, it is apparent that particular details of an event are more salient to each partner. One husband remembered principally the difficulties with the wife’s parents during the engagement while the wife placed more emphasis on the long walks that a couple took during that time. These kinds of memories and perceptions are the target of the interview coding procedures, and become indicators of a marriage’s positive vs. Negative sentiment, “we-ness” vs. seperateness, and other important aspects of marital adjustment. To reiterate, these differences became more sharply defined and recognizable in comparing the individual with the couple interview.
Of further interest was the process of editing that took place as a narrative unfolded. Typically in the couple interview one spouse would assume the role of storyteller for a particular account. As he or she told the story, the spouse would tend to insert or qualify details. These processes were also more sharply defined when compared to the unedited (individual) accounts of individuals.
The study has suggested several possible lines of research. I have submitted an additional proposal to the Office of Research and Creative Activities to explore the use of this interview and coding methodology in a father-child relationship. This study seeks to extend these tools to different kinds of relationships and to collect a body of information about grown children’s perceptions of father-child relationships. Perhaps most importantly, this study has helped our team develop some new theoretical models concerning couple perceptions. There is limited literature on the interactive roles of memory and perceptions in relationships. We are excited about this chance to contribute new ideas to the field.
The results of the study will be presented at the 2005 convention of the Utah Council on Family Relations, and hopefully again at the National Council convention. This study has also laid the groundwork for my honors thesis on couple perceptions which will be defended in Winter 2006.
Professor Day has been an outstanding mentor to me in every way possible. Because he was so supportive and left me so much autonomy, by the study’s end I will have personal experience in all phases of academic research in the social sciences, including study planning, piloting, grant writing, working with an Internal Review Board, organizing and executing the study, collecting and analyzing data, and seeking publication in an appropriate forum. Because of this I feel exceptionally well prepared to enter graduate level training. I also feel that I will have an edge over my peers in higher level education as a direct result of the investment of the Office of Research and Creative Activities and its sponsors.