CONSEQUENCES OF PARTICIPATING IN A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF MARRIAGE

The possibility that survey research methods, particularly those used in longitudinal studies, can effect enduring changes in attitudes or behavior among respondents was explored using data from a 4-year study of black and white newlyweds. Randomly selected couples in first marriages were assigned to either a relatively large study group or a smaller control group, with the former receiving more frequent and more intense interviewing over the study period. Some evidence is found that participating in the panel procedures has consequences for the experience of marital well-being. Compared to the control group, the study group had significantly higher variance in their reported marital satisfaction in the second year of marriage, reflecting the fact that a greater number of study group respondents reported low satisfaction. By the fourth year, however, the marriages of the study group couples appeared to be better adjusted on several dimensions of marital quality. There are some issues that researchers who use survey methodology would like to repress. Perhaps the most disturbing of these is the possibility that the methods they use may actually cause a shortor longterm change in the very phenomenon they are trying to measure-in other words, that certain survey research designs, particularly longitudinal ones, may comprise an unintentional intervention that changes attitudes or behavior or both. Here we present research from an experJOSEPH VEROFF iS professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. SHIRLEY HATCHETT is associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois. ELIZABETH DOUVAN is professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) (MH41253). We would like to acknowledge our collaboration with the members of the Life Course Development Program. James House gave us helpful suggestions about an earlier version of this article. Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 56:315-327 ( 1992 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research All rights reserved. 0033-362X/92/5603-0004$02.50 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.58 on Wed, 12 Oct 2016 04:29:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 316 Veroff, Hatchett, and Douvan imental manipulation in a 4-year longitudinal study of marital adjustment and stability among black and white urban newlyweds that suggests that such effects may occur. We incorporated this experimental design in response to a concern raised by human subjects review boards at both the University of Michigan and the National Institute of Mental Health. Both groups wondered whether long-term, in-depth inquiry into the bases of affection, conflict, difficulties and problems in a marriage, perceptions of each other, attitudes toward gender roles, general levels of wellbeing in the marriage, and the like could raise concerns in a married couple about each other that would not have been considered had we not asked about them. In research directly relevant to the question, Wilson et al. (1984) found that having undergraduates explain their dating relationships (i.e., telling them to "list all the reasons you can think of why your relationship . . . is going the way it is") had a disruptive effect on attitude-behavior consistency-that is, the relationship between feelings toward their partners and whether the couple is dating several months later, as compared to a control group. Since that study, Wilson, Kraft, and Dunn (1989) have reanalyzed the data and have found that the disruptive effect occurs only for couples who had been dating a short amount of time. Various explanations are offered. The ones given greatest credence focus on the assumption that people in longer relationships probably have more consistent schemas about the relationship and hence are less likely to generate new material about the relationship in the interview that would disrupt the connection between present attitude and future behavior. This should be less true for the shorter relationships. The implication of these results for our study is that interviewing newlyweds who had known each other a long time might be less disruptive of their ongoing relationship than interviewing newlyweds who have been in shorter relationships. One might have similar expectations with regard to whether or not the couples lived together before marriage. We might assume that cohabitation would give the couples broader experiences to develop schemas that are more resistant than those of couples who did not live together. Wilson et al. (1989) are doing parallel research on other attitude objects besides dating partners-particularly political figures. In that context, they find that there is a bidirectional attitude change when subjects are asked to generate explanations for their attitudes. Some become more positive over time; some more negative. Following Wilson's lead, we would expect an increased variance on measures of marital well-being over time for couples we intensively interviewed at more points than for a control group interviewed less intensively and for a shorter period of time. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.58 on Wed, 12 Oct 2016 04:29:19 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Consequences of a Study in Marriage 317 Researchers have also found effects of being interviewed on political behavior. There is some evidence that preelection surveys increase the rate of actual voting of some respondents (Anderson, Silver, and Abramson 1988; Clausen 1968; Kraut and McConohay 1973; Traugott and Katosh 1979; Yalch 1976). Thus, there is some evidence to suggest that the kind of effect that concerned the human subjects board might result from our 4-year prospective study of newlyweds in first marriages. Little is known about attitudinal or behavioral change resulting from data collection. However, we generated two general hypotheses about what types of effects we might find when we examine marital adjustment and well-being among randomly sampled couples in our main study and control groups. First, following Wilson et al.'s (1989) lead, we explored whether there was greater variance in marital quality measures in the second year among the study group compared to the control group. Second, we felt that the general effect of more frequent and intensive interviews would be positive by the fourth year, with the main study group having better marital adjustment and stability than the control group. We felt that both of these effects would be smaller for couples who had considered themselves a couple for a longer period of time, as Wilson, Kraft, and Dunn's (1989) research suggested.