Long-term marriages: A critical review

Research guidelines are proposed for the study of long-term marriages based on a critical review of existing studies. Current problems in the collection and analysis of the data include the lack of agreement about the minimum length of a long-term relationship, the failure to make couple comparisons, or to follow samples longitudinally. In addition, the response rate is uniformly low and the variables studied are not consistent. Future research should gather data about couples, not just individuals, and should utilize standardized measures. It is important to begin to build a comprehensive and comparable data base of long-term marital relationships.     

Joint custody and co-parenting: not by law but by love

In recent years, joint custody and co-parenting of children after divorce or separation has received considerable attention. The authors advocate wider recognition of this option to sole custody and visitation, review pertinent legal and other literature, identify indications and contraindications, and briefly discuss the implications for social workers.     

Artifact in client satisfaction assessment: experience in community mental health settings

Artifact in client satisfaction assessment is discussed and the results of a study of three factors thought to mediate client satisfaction ratings; (a) general life satisfaction, (b) mode of administration, and (c) psychological symptomatology, are reported. A standard client satisfaction questionnaire (CSQ) was modified to yield parallel forms and was administered orally and in writing to 92 clients in two mental health day treatment programs. Satisfaction ratings obtained from these clients were quite similar to out-patient ratings obtained in previous studies conducted in this setting and using the same measures. Oral administration of the CSQ produced 10% higher satisfaction ratings than written administration (p less than .05) and less missing data (p less than .01). Satisfaction ratings were also obtained using a simple graphic instrument. Graphic ratings were comparable to CSQ ratings. Satisfaction with life in general and level of psychiatric symptoms together accounted for 25% of CSQ variance. The implication of these findings for future client satisfaction research is discussed.     

Some factors related to contraceptive behavior among Wind River Shoshone and Arapahoe females

During the summer of 1972 in-depth interviews were conducted with 96 Shoshone and Arapahoe Indian women living on the Wind River Reservation in Central Wyoming. All were aged 15-49 and were users of the reservation health service. It was found the women fell into 4 groups: current contraceptive users, 42.7%; pregnant or seeking to become pregnant, 10.4%; infertile due to menopause or sterilization, 18.8%; and fertile never-users, 28.1%. The contraceptive users tended to be older, married, and have as many children as they want. The fertile never-users tended to be in their teens and generally unmarried. When asked why they did not use contraception their answer was 'because I am not married.' It is suggested that general education on contraception be provided the younger women so that when they achieve desired family size they will be informed as to family planning methods. It was found that religious belief against contraception was important to the young never-users, but not to the women who had completed their families. In fact, 73% of the users said their religion, which most identified as Roman Catholicism, had no influence on their contraceptive use while 27% said they were aware of church disapproval but used contraception anyway.     

An analysis of simple counting methods for ordering incomplete ordinal data

Measurement in the social sciences often involves an attempt to completely order a set of entities on the basis of an underlying attribute. However, limitations of the measurement process often prevent complete empirical determination of the desired ordering. Nevertheless, the ordinal data obtained from the measurement process can be used in attempting to recover or construct more of the underlying order than is provided by the data. Previous research (Fishburn and Gehrlein, 1974a) has shown that a simple one-stage construction method, referred to as the cardinal rule, is fairly effective in correctly identifying ordered pairs in the underlying linear order that are not identified by the measurement process. The present paper re-examines the cardinal rule from the perspective of construction methods based on simple counting measures derived from the data, and argues that it is the best one-stage method in this class when a natural monotonicity assumption holds for the measurement process. The paper then examines two-stage construction rules that are based on the cardinal rule and the simple counting measures. It is shown that one of the two-stage rules gives better overall results than does the cardinal rule by itself.