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(Microsoft Word - Measuring Program and Marital Satisfaction Among Hispanic \205)

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Measuring Program and Marital Satisfaction Among Hispanic Couples

Hispanic family researchers and national marriage researchers convened at national forums to address
the challenges of assessments utilized to measure aspects relevant in parenting, family, relationship
satisfaction, and marital quality in Hispanic families. The recommendations summarized in this memo
are drawn from discussions at a research meeting held in conjunction with the Hispanic Healthy
Marriage National Conference, May 11, 2006, in San Antonio, Texas, and a research meeting held in
conjunction with the Center for Latino Family Research on September 15-16, 2006, in St. Louis,
Missouri.

Given the wide scope related to outcome measures, this memo will not be comprehensive and will only
summarize the discussion of the main themes in relation to Hispanic marriage and families as raised by
researchers attending the forums.

Introduction
Public policy and social programs providing marriage enrichment services are relatively new fields.
Historically, the dynamics relevant in marriage and relationships have fallen outside the scope of
government programs and social services. Instead, couples and families have privately struggled with
internal and external stressors impacting their relationships. Friends, family, marital and family
therapists, clergy, and religious institutions have been the only sources of support for couples who turn
towards the community for direction. Many couples, however, choose to struggle in isolation and turn
away from traditional sources of support because of stigma, lack of knowledge of services available,
financial hardship, insurance limitations, transportation, and resistance towards opening up to others.

Evidence of the negative repercussions of coping with stressors in isolation is observed in social science
research reporting that 50% of marriages in the United States end in divorce. In contrast to traditional
reasons for divorce e.g., nonsupport, abuse, or alcoholism couples today are more likely to say they
are separating because of communication problems, a lack of fulfillment, or incompatibility (Sigelman
and Schaffer, 1991). The effects of divorce on children including increased aggressiveness,
noncompliance, acting-out behaviors, disruptions in peer and other interpersonal relationships, academic
difficulties, and poverty have increased awareness of the importance of family structure and attitudes
about marriage and relationships (Hetherington and Clingempeel, 1992). As research reveals the cost
generated as a consequence of disintegrated families, marriage and couple relationships are now viewed
as social constructs that influence social issues such as child well-being and poverty.

As government and social service providers implement programs designed to help individuals who
choose marriage for themselves form, sustain, and maintain healthy marriages, researchers are
challenged to adequately measure program and individual outcomes. Developing and implementing
valid and reliable outcome measures of marriage and family formation dynamics is a complex process
that requires a multifaceted approach. Apart from obtaining nominal measures depicting frequency of
participation, participant satisfaction, outreach and delivery format, and adequacy of facilities where
programs were rendered, observing the effects of the programs on marital satisfaction and distress
requires quantitative and qualitative measures. The social sciences have struggled with successfully


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capturing the ultimate criterions of relationship dynamics such as: affect and context communication,
problem solving, child-rearing, friendship and sexuality, nuclear and extended family, religious
influence, aggression and anger. Accurately converting these ultimate criterions into actual measurable
criterions is a challenge. Even when social scientists succeed in achieving this with some statistical
significance, additional limitations arise.


Limitations can range from internal to external factors that threaten the validity of the measure. Is the
measure written at a reading-level appropriate for the couple taking the assessment? Are there cues in
the environment that influence, either negatively or positively, the manner in which the couple
responds? Are there external or internal events occurring in the life of the individual or couple that are
not accounted for that may influence their response? Does a self-report provide an adequate depiction of
the nature of a relationship? Researchers developing valid and reliable measures to observe the
outcomes of programs for couples are plagued with these and many other nuances of measurement
construction.

Moreover, the challenges of developing outcome measures for programs developed for couples are
complicated further when influencing factors of personal values, personality, diversity, and social and
economic factors are also considered. Individual values are influenced by culture, religious and ethnic
background, environmental context in which the person was raised, social context, and belief system.
All of these aspects interact in forming aspirations and expectations towards marriage, which in turn
impact negative and positive interactions in relationships.

This is particularly important as our attention is turned towards developing and implementing program
outcomes related to marriage and family in the Hispanic community. Given the growth of the Hispanic
population in the U.S., providing adequate programs that serve this community has become a concern of
public policy. Thus, as local programs and federal initiatives develop that encourage healthy marriage,
evaluators and researchers are challenged by the question what works best for Hispanics living in the
United States? To answer this question, investigators must have the tools to measure these programs.
Similar processes that have been undertaken by social scientists to develop tools to assess marital
enrichment programs for the mainstream community in the United States will also need to be undertaken
for the Hispanic community. One exception to this process is that in order to create valid outcome tools
for Hispanics residing in the U.S., social scientists will also need to focus attention on the interaction of
the dimensions of culture as influencing latent traits of marriage and relationship dynamics.

The purpose of this memo is to initiate a conversation among the research community on how to
measure programmatic and individual success in healthy marriage programs that are culturally relevant
and statistically valid among Hispanic couples in the U.S.


What Do We Know?
At least three processes are involved in administering measurement tools to Hispanic marriages and
families: 1) development of culturally relevant tools, 2) format and contextual administration of the
measurement tool, and 3) analysis of the results. Although the available research conducted in the
arena of marriage and Hispanic families provides limited information with regards to these three


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processes, additional lessons can be gleaned from research on other aspects relevant to Hispanic families
that have been investigated more widely.

Development of Culturally Relevant Tools
Although universal factors can be found across cultures, such as facial expressions (e.g., sadness,
happiness, surprise, anger, fear, contempt, and pain), interpretations of experiences and modes of
experiences may differ from culture to culture. Individual or relational constructs or concepts may
interact with cultural and social factors. For example, in the United States, low-context communication
is prevalent, meaning it is highly dependent on verbal cues and content. Whereas in Latin America,
high-context communication or communication that relies on non-verbal body language is most
prevalent.


Cross-ethnic and cross-cultural research can be approached from an etic or emic perspective. The etic
perspective is comparative and the emic perspective is intracultural. The etic perspective attempts to
explain common and similar phenomena across different cultural contexts, while the emic perspective
seeks to understand the elements from within the culture and its context. The emic perspective aims to
study the internal logic of culture, its singularity, and interrelationship with other intracultural elements.
Cross cultural researchers are challenged to reconcile these two approaches as they adopt and translate
measures.

The role of culture is key in integrating

universal similarities and contextual differences. Culture
provides categories and lexicons for emotional experience and expression, sets limits of tolerance for
specific emotions and affect, shapes social responses to distress and disability, influences beliefs about
the etiology of distress, provides a context for making meaning out of suffering, and sets variations in
family str