Recalling Experiences: Looking at Momentary, Retrospective and Global Assessments of Relationship Satisfaction

Trajectories of relationship and sexual satisfaction over 2 years in the Covid-19 pandemic: A latent class analysis

OBJECTIVE

Previous research on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on romantic relationships has mainly concentrated on short-term effects and average trends of change. This study aimed to explore different trajectories of relationship and sexual satisfaction from April 2020 to March 2022.

METHOD

Including a cross-national sample of 2859 individuals, a latent class approach was applied to identify subgroups of sexual and relationship satisfaction trajectories. Participants' satisfaction levels, attachment style, psychological symptoms, life satisfaction, and living arrangements were taken into account.

RESULTS

Three latent classes were identified for both relationship and sexual satisfaction: (1) a group with high satisfaction levels but a slightly declining trajectory, (2) a group with low satisfaction levels but an ascending trajectory, and (3) a fluctuating group. Living apart, having children, psychological symptoms, low life satisfaction, and avoidant attachment characterized the two groups with low or fluctuating trajectories.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that there were different trajectories of relationship and sexual satisfaction during the pandemic, which can be predicted by individual dispositions. Even 2 years after the pandemic, its effects had not disappeared.

Flourishing (or lack thereof) during COVID-19: College students'social-psychological well-being during the Fall 2020 semester

Objective: This exploratory quantitative study examined college students' social-psychological well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants: The sample included 1,723 students (undergraduate and graduate) at a public research university. Methods: Paired samples t-test were utilized to compare students' social-psychological well-being pre-pandemic, at the start of the Fall 2020 semester, and toward the end of the Fall 2020 semester. Regression analyses were utilized to identify predictors of students' social-psychological well-being at the start and toward the end of the Fall 2020 semester. Results: Students experienced a significant decrease in social-psychological well-being pre-pandemic to the start of the Fall 2020 semester and most had not returned to pre-pandemic levels toward the end of the semester. While demographics, housing arrangements, and course modality impacted social-psychological well-being, they only explained a small percentage of the variance in students' well-being. Conclusion: Students continued to experience low mental well-being during the Fall 2020 semester.

Development, woman-centricity and psychometric properties of maternity patient-reported experience measures: a systematic review

OBJECTIVE

Valid and reliable maternity patient-reported experience measures are critical to understanding women's experiences of care. They can support clinical practice, health service and system performance measurement, and research. The aim of this review is to identify and critically appraise the risk of bias, woman-centricity (content validity), and psychometric properties of maternity patient-reported experience measures published in the scientific literature.

DATA SOURCES

MEDLINE, CINAHL Plus, PsycINFO, and Embase were systematically searched for relevant records between January 1, 2010 and July 10, 2021.

STUDY ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

We searched for articles describing the instrument development of maternity patient-reported experience measures and measurement properties associated with instrument validity and reliability testing. Articles that described patient-reported experience measures developed outside of the maternity context and articles that did not contribute to the instruments' development, content validation, and/or psychometric evaluation were excluded.

METHODS

Included articles underwent risk of bias, content validity, and psychometric properties assessments in line with the COSMIN (COnsensus-based Standards for the selection of health Measurement INstruments) guidance. Patient-reported experience measure results were summarized according to language subgroups. An overall recommendation for use was determined for each patient-reported experience measure language subgroup.

RESULTS

A total of 54 studies reported on the development and psychometric evaluation of 25 maternity patient-reported experience measures, grouped into 45 language subgroups. The quality of evidence underpinning the instruments' development was generally poor. Only 2 (4.4%) patient-reported experience measures reported sufficient content validity, and only 1 (2.2%) received a level "A" recommendation, required for real-world use.

CONCLUSION

Maternity patient-reported experience measures demonstrated poor-quality evidence for their measurement properties and insufficient detail about content validity. Future maternity patient-reported experience measure development needs to prioritize women's involvement in deciding what is relevant, comprehensive, and comprehensible to measure. Improving the content validity of maternity patient-reported experience measures will improve overall validity and reliability and facilitate real-world practice improvements. Standardized patient-reported experience measure implementation also needs to be prioritized to support advancements in clinical practice for women.

Motivational Interdependence in Couple Relationships

This article presents an integrative conceptual model of motivational interdependence in couples, the MIC model. Based on theoretical tenets in motivation psychology, personality psychology, and research on interpersonal perception, the MIC model postulates that two partners' motive dispositions fundamentally interact in shaping their individual motivation and behavior. On a functional level, a partner's motivated behavior is conceptualized as an environmental cue that can contribute to an actor's motive expression and satisfaction. However, the partner's motivated behavior is considered to gain this motivational relevance only via the actor's subjective perception. Multilevel analyses of an extensive experience sampling study on partner-related communal motivation (N = up to 60,803 surveys from 508 individuals nested in 258 couples) supported the MIC model. Participants, particularly those with strong communal motive dispositions, behaved more communally at moments when they perceived their partners to behave more communally. In addition, participants experienced momentary boosts in satisfaction when they behaved more communally and, at the same time, perceived their partners' behavior as similarly communal. Broader implications of the MIC model for research on romantic relationships are discussed.

Relationship satisfaction in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cross-national examination of situational, dispositional, and relationship factors

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had a large impact on various aspects of life, but questions about its effects on close relationships remain largely unanswered. In the present study, we examined perceived changes in relationship satisfaction at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic by using an international sample of 3,243 individuals from 67 different countries, mostly from Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In April and May 2020, participants responded to an online survey that included questions about relationship satisfaction, their satisfaction before the pandemic, other relationship aspects (e.g., shared time), special circumstances (e.g., mobility restrictions), and enduring dispositions (e.g., insecure attachment). A decline in time shared with one's partner was most strongly associated with perceived decreases in relationship satisfaction, resulting in a different pattern of findings for cohabiting and non-cohabiting individuals. Among the most influential moderators were anxious and avoidant attachment. The findings offer insights into both aggravating and protecting factors in couples' responses to pandemic-related stressors.

Measuring motivational relationship processes in experience sampling: A reliability model for moments, days, and persons nested in couples

The investigation of within-person process models, often done in experience sampling designs, requires a reliable assessment of within-person change. In this paper, we focus on dyadic intensive longitudinal designs where both partners of a couple are assessed multiple times each day across several days. We introduce a statistical model for variance decomposition based on generalizability theory (extending P. E. Shrout & S. P. Lane, 2012), which can estimate the relative proportion of variability on four hierarchical levels: moments within a day, days, persons, and couples. Based on these variance estimates, four reliability coefficients are derived: between-couples, between-persons, within-persons/between-days, and within-persons/between-moments. We apply the model to two dyadic intensive experience sampling studies (n₁ = 130 persons, 5 surveys each day for 14 days, ≥ 7508 unique surveys; n₂ = 508 persons, 5 surveys each day for 28 days, ≥ 47764 unique surveys). Five different scales in the domain of motivational processes and relationship quality were assessed with 2 to 5 items: State relationship satisfaction, communal motivation, and agentic motivation; the latter consists of two subscales, namely power and independence motivation. Largest variance components were on the level of persons, moments, couples, and days, where within-day variance was generally larger than between-day variance. Reliabilities ranged from .32 to .76 (couple level), .93 to .98 (person level), .61 to .88 (day level), and .28 to .72 (moment level). Scale intercorrelations reveal differential structures between and within persons, which has consequences for theory building and statistical modeling.

Motivated behavior in intimate relationships: Comparing the predictive value of motivational variables

Motivational variables are considered fundamental factors influencing the occurrence of behavior. The current study compared different types of motivational variables (implicit and explicit motive dispositions, motivation as states and as aggregated person-level variables) in their ability to predict communal and agentic behavior reports in intimate relationships. 510 individuals completed measures of dispositional communion and agency motives and participated in a dyadic experience sampling study with five assessments per day across four weeks. They reported on their momentary communal and agentic motivation, as well as on their own and their partner’s behaviors. All examined types of motivational variables predicted certain behavior reports on the between-person or within-person level and had incremental effects beyond the other motivational variables in at least one motive domain. Directly replicating and conceptually extending prior research, the effects of motivational states and their aggregates were consistently found across behavioral outcomes, across self- and partner-reports and across the motive domains of communion and agency. Using the example of motivational states, the general value of assessing within-person variables for psychological phenomena in ESM-designs is discussed.