Predicting premarital cohabitation: Employing individuals versus couples as the units of analysis

This study employs a sample of 309 recently married couples to discover predictors of cohabitation and cohabital duration before marriage. On the individual level religiosity and sex-role traditionalism were negatively related to the probability of having cohabited for both husbands and wives. However, couple-level analyses revealed that these variables significantly predictnot cohabiting only whenboth partners are religious or traditional. A history of previous divorce is related to a greater propensity to cohabit only when the wife has been married before, but the husband has not. No variables were significantly related to cohabital duration.