Transactional Associations between Couple Relationship Quality and Depressive Symptoms
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Date
2019-03
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Abstract
Depressive symptoms and couple relationship quality are important aspects of individual functioning and family wellbeing. The current study tests a comprehensive transactional model to reveal the direction of the associations between couple relationship quality and one’s own and one’s partner’s depressive symptoms. We used six waves of data from the NICHD-SECCYD collected from 1994 to 2005. At each wave, 654 couples (654 men and 654 women all married and/or living together) reported their relationship quality and depressive symptoms. An actor-partner interdependence Random Intercept Cross Lagged Panel Model (RI-CLPM) was estimated to examine reciprocal relations between men and women’s depressive symptoms and couple relationship quality. Results of the cross-lagged paths showed that higher couple relationship quality perceived by men and women predicted their partner’s perceptions of higher couple relationship quality at the next time point. Moreover, better women-perceived couple relationship quality predicted lower levels of women’s depressive symptoms at the next time point (while the reverse was not true), and lower levels of men’s depressive symptoms predicted better men-perceived relationship quality (while the other direction was nonsignificant). We discussed the potential reasons for observing reverse temporal precedence of depressive symptoms and couple relationships among men and women, and the theoretical, methodological, and practical implications of our findings.
Description
Education and Human Ecology: 2nd Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)
Keywords
Psychology, Families, Couple Relationship, Depressive Symptoms