DOI: 10.5064/f6vanjl8
title: So What Is Relationship Quality? A Multi-Country Investigation into the Conceptualization and Measurement of Relationship Quality

description: &lt;h3&gt;Project Overview&lt;/h3&gt; 
&lt;p&gt; Romantic relationship quality is a foundational construct, yet there remains no consensus on its definition, conceptualization, and measurement. This study presents findings from a large-scale qualitative investigation (N=184; 10,055 minutes of interview data) of lay individuals across five countries (Philippines, United States, France, Brazil and Türkiye), and relationship therapists (N=21; 11 countries; 893 minutes of interview data) to understand how individuals conceptualize and evaluate romantic relationship quality.&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;Through a thematic and conceptual analysis, we find that while individuals’ evaluations of their relationships are heterogeneous, they exhibit constrained variability with consistently shared themes across culturally different countries. The shared themes are mapped to a relationship ecosystem comprising of higher-order categories of relationship characteristics (e.g., stability), self-states (e.g., satisfaction, instrumentality), perceived partner characteristics (e.g., trust, responsiveness), dyadic interactions (e.g., conflict, needs expression), and contextual variables (e.g., material resources, religion). Romantic relationship quality is then defined as a subjective evaluation based on idiographically held standards, which represents the individual’s sense-making of their relationship ecosystem. While shared elements exist across cultures, their relative importance and manifestation vary across culturally different countries (e.g., the Turkish distinction between love as passionate or companionate, or the Filipino emphasis on religion).&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;This provides the foundation for a comprehensive framework for psychometrically representing romantic relationship quality which is ecologically valid, with strong promise for utility in clinical practice. &lt;/p&gt;
description: &lt;h3&gt;Data and Data Collection Overview&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;h4&gt;Team Composition:&lt;/h4&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;This large-scale qualitative investigation was made possible through an extensive international collaboration among researchers from the five primary data collection sites (the Philippines, Türkiye, Brazil, France, and the United States) supported by an advisory and coordination team spanning multiple countries. The core research and advisory team was led by Miguel Silan as the project lead. The advisory team included Harry Reis, Berry Aamoudse, Andrew Maul, Rebecca Shankland, Aerjen Tamminga, Johan Karremans, and Hans IJzerman. 
A distributed data collection team in each country coordinated local recruitment, interview scheduling, and data management. Each team was composed of research assistants, interviewers, and administrative collaborators. Full record of all collaborators is shared as part of the data publication documentation. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;Interview Process:&lt;/h4&gt;
 &lt;p&gt;To explore the conceptualization of romantic relationship quality, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted between October 2022 to August 2024 in five culturally diverse countries. The primary goals of the interview procedure were to explore how people think about romantic relationship quality, examine how they evaluate their (and others’) relationships, and have a comprehensive appraisal into the interviewee’s romantic relationship. The full interview guide in English is shared as part of the documentation and includes questions on demographics, romantic relationship quality, love, conflict and conflict resolution, relationship maintenance, instrumentality, identity, relationship safety, partner responsiveness, sex, and satisfaction. Interviews with lay participants ranged from 30 minutes to 4 hours, with typical interviews around 1 hour.&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;This was also complemented with interviews with relationship therapists (N=21) which consisted of discussion of their clinical and assessment practices, how they conceptualize romantic relationship quality, what they would look for in a newly developed romantic relationship quality scale, and how this would fit into their practice. Therapist interviews typically lasted about 40 minutes. The research team used transcription software (Trint, 
Otter.ai, and Whisper AI) to automatically transcribe interviews which were then manually reviewed for accuracy. Team members translated transcripts originally in Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, and French into English. These translations, together with the original English and Filipino transcripts, formed the corpus for analysis. Following transcription and translation, all transcripts were manually de-identified in preparation for deposit and wider sharing. &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;h4&gt;Participants Sampling Approach:&lt;/h4&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;A modified targeted chain referral method (dubbed “Drift sampling”) was implemented for the lay participants. Among a roster of potential dimensions, satisfaction, relationship length, relative socio-economic status, monogamy status and partner gender composition, and sexual orientation were chosen as initial dimensions to explore the possibility space of the conceptualization of relationship. For each of the five participating countries, a “Nominator” was first identified by the local data collectors to begin the sampling process. The Nominator then suggested three contacts that match a specific profile from the sampling matrix, and one contact was randomly chosen for an interview. The local data collector reached out to the suggested people to assess the availability and willingness to participate. If the selected participant was not available or declined, the local data collector proceeded to contact one of the two remaining individuals suggested by the Nominator. At the end of each interview, participants were asked to nominate two additional Nominators, and each of these new Nominators provided three more contacts for the next matrix cell. This branching procedure continued iteratively until all matrix cells were filled with the required number of couples for the study (see the Sampling Scheme documentation file). This sampling strategy is midway between convenience sampling and true random sampling. It allowed for outsized reach, not just within the researchers’ network but also the branching network of the participants and nominators, effectively leveraging a continuously branching network of networks to maximize within-country variation. Importantly, the same sampling procedure was implemented independently across all five countries, allowing for maximized within-country variation while preserving methodological consistency across research sites.&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;h4&gt;Lay Individuals Sample:&lt;/h4&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;The analyzed sample included N = 184 individuals across five countries—the Philippines, Türkiye, Brazil, France, and the United States—resulting in 10,055 minutes of interview data. The sample consisted of 58.70% female (n = 108) and 41.30% male participants (n = 76), with 83.15% of participants being in different sex relationships (n = 153) and 16.85% being in same sex relationships (n = 31). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 71 years (M = 32.65, SD = 3.45). Self-reported relationship duration ranged from 1 month to 51 years (M = 9.86 years, SD = 1.51).&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;h4&gt;Relationship Therapists Sample:&lt;h4&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;The team also conducted in-depth interviews with 21 therapists from a larger set of countries (the Netherlands, France, Brazil, Italy, Belgium, the Philippines, Czech Republic, Singapore, Austria, Germany, and the United States; 893 minutes of total interview data). This set of participants came from a range of clinical modalities, including emotionally focused therapy, integrative behavioral couples therapy, psychodynamic therapy, systemic therapy, and acceptance and commitment therapy. Years of clinical practice ranged from 6 months to 45 years. They were recruited through the professional networks of the key project contributors (primarily Berry Arnoudse, Harry Reis, Hans Rocha IJzerman and Miguel Silan). Efforts were made to ensure diversity across therapeutic modality, geographic location and cultural context.&lt;/p&gt;
description: &lt;h3&gt;Selection and Organization of Shared Data&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The data files shared in this deposit consist of 199 items. The reasons for six transcripts from the full set of interviews not being shared are as follows:
&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;One therapist interview was excluded because the interview was not fully completed.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Three lay participant interviews excluded because the participants did not provide consent for data sharing.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Two additional lay interviews are not yet in a shareable state at the time of this deposit. These files have additional transcription and de-identification/redaction needs, identified during the team’s final internal review. When processed, they might be added to a future version of the data deposit.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The lay interview transcripts are sorted into folders by country of origin. Within the country-of-origin folders, participants are further sorted into sub-folders, labeled as Option One or Option Two, depending on their choice of redaction technique chosen prior to data sharing. (More details on the options can be found in the Informed Consent and Data Notice documentation file.) Interview files were additionally labeled using the names of the local data collectors who conducted the interviews, both to ensure clear traceability of the data collection process and to acknowledge their essential contributions to the study.&lt;/p&gt; 
&lt;p&gt;The documentation files shared consist of the full interview guide in English, a comprehensive list of collaborators by site, demographic profile of the participants, redaction protocol, a public codebook, the informed consent and data notice form used in the study in English (and a few of the additional translations included as illustration), this Data Narrative, and an administrative README file.&lt;/p&gt;