ABSTRACT
Before discussing recent trends in marital therapy and in the assessment field that have influenced the development of marital assessment, important developments of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s should be recognized as setting the stage for the methodological refinements, which have been occurring in the marital therapy area in the past decade. The domain of marriage has long been a concern of sociologists who teach many courses such as “Marriage,” and “The Family” and, therefore, have been especially concerned with the assessment of marital discord and marital satisfaction. For example, sociologists and family life professionals, such as Burgess and Cottrell (1939), Terman and Wallin (1949), Burgess and Locke (1953), Locke and Wallace (1959), and Spanier (1976) developed instruments to assess marital satisfaction which have been used in their original or somewhat altered form for years. The existence of such instruments set the stage for research concerning the prediction of marital happiness and stability of relationships. Whether these researchers focused on “marital happiness,” “marital satisfaction,” or “marital adjustment,” they all seem to have been measuring the same basic variable. Measurement specialists might regard the early assessment instruments measuring marital satisfaction as crude, although some of the early studies were quite successful in predicting marital stability. For example, using one of the earliest instruments to assess marital satisfaction, Terman and Wallin (1949) found a correlation of .47 between marital satisfaction scores over an eight year interval.
