I wasn't asking them to tell me this information. I was asking them to indicate the topics they has disclosed to their mother, their father, their closest friend of the same sex, and their closest friend of the opposite sex, or their spouse. With any research, critics are bound to state their opinions. For instance, Altman and Taylor disagreed with Jourard's theory regarding self-disclosure. Breadth refers to one's external self or information of an individual that is made public by interpersonal communication.
Depth refers to the internal self or information of an individual that is kept private.
The goal of an intimate relationship is to get to know a person's internal self, which is done through self-disclosure. It has been said that one way of looking at the model is to imagine that it is an onion. The outer layer is the breadth, the inner layer is the depth. The more individuals in a relationship self-disclose to one another, layers of the onion peel off until one has reached the inner layer, or core, of the other individual. There have been numerous studies conducted regarding self-disclosure.