ABSTRACT
The Quality Marriage Index (QMI) was developed as a result of work on another scale, the Partner Communication Scale (PCS). The PCS was mailed to 507 couples across four states and consisted of 261 items; only 20 items were analyzed for the QMI. The QMI is a global evaluative assessment of marital happiness and therefore avoids many of the problems associated with traditional measures of marital quality. Although the QMI has not been used extensively, it appears to be a valid and reliable means of assessing marital satisfaction. Covariates that are independent of marital quality were used to investigate the construct validity of the index. For example, as similarity of attitudes increases, so does perceived marital quality. R. W. Norton reported that those with low QMI scores have talked about ending their relationship. Other researchers also investigated the validity of the QMI.
