Study Hawkins & Booth (2005): study US 1980

Public

Couples, USA, followed 12 years, 1980-1992

Survey name

US-Longitudinal study Instability of marriage over life course

Sample

Respondents

N = 1150

Non Response

35%

Assessment

Interview: Computer Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI)

Correlate

Authors's Label

Unhappily married

Our Classification

Error Estimates

Alpha=.87

Remarks

Assessed at T1(1980), T2(1983), T3(1988) and T4(1992)

Distribution

M=.14, SD=.35, Range 0-1

Operationalization

Selfreport on 11 questions on marital happiness.
Seven items ask about happiness with specific aspects of marriage such as understanding, agreement and faithfulness.
Four items are concerned with the global satisfaction of the marriage, such as overall happiness and whether the marriage is getting better or worse.

Ss were classified as "Unhappily married" when Ss were married continuously and score below the mean marital happiness in all four times.

1 unhappily married
0 other

Observed Relation with Happiness