Assessment of Marital Discord: An Integration for Research and Practice

Studies reported in this book involve listeners who grew up in a western European tradition of tonal music, and therefore, focus upon that tradition in assessing the ways in which melodies are understood and remembered. There is an underlying concern in this volume to clarify the relation central to aesthetic questions between physical patterns of sound energy in the world, and our psychological experience of them. It is clear that there are a number of levels of structure in the world, and each is grasped psychologically in a different way. Music requires an interplay over time of tensions involving stability and change, of invariant patterns and variations upon them. These chapters explore some of the ways in which that can be accomplished. This book is designed to present the most recent research data on assessment of various aspects of marriage. Noted authorities on specific assessment areas provide information on conceptual and practical issues in marital assessment. The chapters include assessment of:

* Behavior by A. Christensen

* Affect by F. Fincham & T. Bradbury

* Social Cognition by I. Arias & S. Beach

* Communication by D. Baucom & A. Adams

* Sexual Dysfunction by J. LoPiccolo & S. Daiss

* Child and Marital Problems by R. Emery, S. Joyce, F. Fincham

* Family Assessment by J. Vincent & A. Carter

All of these chapters include reference to specific assessment measures of the specific areas covered. In addition, for ready clinical use, one measure has been selected by each of the authors to represent a state of the art measure that can be used by clinicians. Reliability, validity, and normative data are presented on these measures which are presented in full in the appendix of the text.

O'Leary provides a context for this book in the first chapter of the book, The Emergence of Marital Assessment. In the final chapter, Marital Assessment and Clinical Practice, O'Leary and Arias discuss how they begin their assessments, from the initial phone contact, the assessment battery, the interviews with the clients and the couple to the evaluation of the therapy sessions by the clients.