THE EFFECTS OF A TWO-WEEKEND MARITAL ENRICHMENT PROGRAM ON SELF-DISCLOSURE AND MARITAL ADJUSTMENT
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| Publicado en: | ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (1981) |
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ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
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| Acceso en línea: | Citation/Abstract |
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| Resumen: | The Problem. Earlier research has shown that the effects of a one-weekend marital enrichment program quickly diminish with time. The purpose of this study was to determine what effect a two-weekend marital enrichment program had on self-disclosure and marital adjustment, and to determine the relationship of self-disclosure to marital adjustment. The marital enrichment program was a two-weekend workshop with two weeks between training sessions. Method. The married couples participating in this study were drawn from the greater San Diego area. These participants ranged between 20 and 55 years of age, were married one to 32 years, had a mean of 1.5 children, and averaged approximately two years of college. All but seven subjects claimed a religious orientation. All the couples had responded to advertisements in various Protestant church bulletins featuring the two-weekend program. The bulletin stated that the workshops were designed to train couples in effective communication and elements that led to greater marital adjustment. Sixteen couples (N = 32) were randomly assigned to an experimental group which participated in the two-weekend program. Sixteen couples were randomly assigned to a control group which did not participate in any type of enrichment program. Couples not randomly assigned to participate in the two-weekend program were offered a similar experience three months after the present study was completed. The Solomon Four-Group Design was chosen because it has earned the highest prestige of the experimental models because of its consideration of "external validity" factors (Campbell and Stanley, 1963). Therefore, half of the experimental couples' group and half of the control couples' group were assigned through randomization to be pretested prior to the experimental couples' participation in the two-weekend program, while all the couples were given posttests immediately following and six weeks after the completion of the two-weekend program. Test instruments used were the Locke-Wallace Marital Adjustment Inventory (1959), Jourard's 21-item Self- Disclosure Questionnaire (1971), and a Demographic Questionnaire. T-tests were performed comparing pre-, post- and the six-week follow-up measures. Results. The results indicated that both self-disclosure and marital adjustment were significantly enhanced as a result of participating in the weekends. The scores of the men in the experimental group on the first posttest (immediately following the conclusion of the workshops) did not increase as much as their wives' scores in the areas of self-disclosure and marital adjustment. However, by the six-week follow-up measure, the husbands' increases were greater than those of their wives. The overall increases for both men and women in the experimental group were significant at the .05 level for self-disclosure and the .01 level for marital adjustment. It is noteworthy that husbands and wives in the experimental group showed gains in their scores from the posttest to the six-week follow-up. The relationship of self-disclosure to marital adjustment was also significant. For the men the correlation was significant at the .01 level, while for women it was established at the .001 level. The effects of age, length of marriage, wife's attendance of religious events, amount of education, number of spouses employed, and number of children showed no significant relationship to self-disclosure or marital adjustment. However, couples were shown to estimate their amount of financial agreement at .8182 (.001 level of confidence). Religious attendance for males was shown to be positively correlated (at .01 level) to both their own and their spouse's marital adjustment. |
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| ISBN: | 9798204760837 |
| Fuente: | ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global |