Marital Adjustment and Conventionalization: A Reexamination

Abstract

Marital adjustment research has been called into question by the claim that its measurements are so contaminated by marital conventionalization as to be of little value. An attempt is made to explain the relationship between adjustment and conventionalization both in terms of idealization of the spouse and in terms of the response format employed in measures of conventionalization. Based upon questionnaire responses from 365 married individuals, these explanations are found to be inadequate. The present analysis leads to the conclusion that conventionalization and adjustment each contaminate the measure of the other, with conventionalization making a genuine contribution to adjustment scores.