ABSTRACT
Research indicates that adults and children are most likely to prosper in a family formed by married biological parents in a low-conflict marriage (Amato, 2000; Seltzer, 2000). Such marriages have come to be called “healthy marriages,” and their creation and support represent a major public-policy goal. A series of government-sponsored evaluations are under way to examine educational, counseling, and other approaches to strengthen the quality and duration of marriages, particularly for low-income couples. Months or even years later, researchers will assess their effectiveness. Thus, increasing the prevalence of healthy marriage is a critical goal for the interventions, and by attaining that goal, policymakers and others expect to see improvements in outcomes for adults, children, and families. The goal of the project discussed in this chapter is to create a scale or index that measures the health of a marriage or relationship, which will be used as an outcome measure in random-assignment intervention evaluations. Although this work can also be of use in other research, our primary purpose is to develop a dependent variable for use in experimental evaluations of marriage interventions.
