1 Happily (N)ever After? Codevelopment of romantic partners in continuing and dissolving unions Supplement 1: Participants, Methods, Analytic Strategy, Results Overview: 1. Participants and Design 2. Measures 3. Attrition 4. Analysis Strategy 4.1. General Strategy 4.2. Statistical Models 4.3. Model Specification 4.4. Multiple Group Comparison 5. Additional Results 6. References 1. Participants and Design The seven waves of data from the pairfam study were collected between 2008 and 2015 with assessments taking place every twelve months. In the computer-assisted personal interviews, survey data are gathered from focal participants
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Happily (N)ever After? Codevelopment of romantic partners in continuing and
The seven waves of data from the pairfam study were collected between 2008 and
2015 with assessments taking place every twelve months. In the computer-assisted personal
interviews, survey data are gathered from focal participants while a subsample of the focal
participants’ intimate partners are assessed with paper-and-pencil self-report questionnaires.
Compliance with ethical standards for German social research and data protection laws was
secured throughout data collection and preparation by the pairfam project team. Informed
consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. At Wave 1,
12,402 focal participants from three age groups (adolescents born between 1991-93, young
adults born between 1981-83, and middle adults born between 1971-73) and 3,743 of their
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romantic partners were recruited. The retention rate in the overall pairfam sample declined to
41.38% for focal participants and 47.88% for partners in Wave 7.
The demographics that serve as covariates are presented in Table S1.
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Table S1
Sample Descriptives and Distribution of Marital and Cohabitation Status at the First Measurement Occasion (Ncontinuing = 1,646, Ndissolving = 319)Descriptives Marital and cohabitation status
Group Continuing Dissolving Continuing DissolvingVariable M SD Range M SD Range Levels N % N %Age females (years) 31.93 5.20 18-52 29.34 5.77 18-56 Married1 1,116 67.80 121 37.93Age males (years) 35.04 6.23 20-69 32.64 6.83 21-65 Unmarried2 530 32.20 198 62.07Relationship duration (years)
Number of children 1.29 1.13 0-10 .95 1.15 0-5 Non-cohabiting 170 10.33 95 29.78Note. 1 Fifty-five (4.5%) of currently married focal participants are remarried. 2 70 (9.6%) of currently unmarried focal participants had been married before.
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2. Measures
The complete list of items, their answer formats, and original measures are presented
in Table S2.
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Table S2
Item List for All Measures Used in the Study and Their Answer FormatsScale Items Answer format Original measureConnectedness
1. How often do you tell your partner what you're thinking?a
2. How often do you share your secrets and private feelings with your partner?a
3. How often does your partner express recognition for what you've done?b
4. How often does your partner show that he/she appreciates you?b
five-point Likert scale from 1 (never) to 5 (always)
German version of the Network of Relationships Inventory (Wittmann, Helm, Buhl, & Noack, 2000)
Conflict 1. How often are you and your partner annoyed or angry with each other?
German version of the Network of Relationships Inventory (Wittmann et al., 2000)2. How often do you and your partner
disagree and quarrel?Autonomy 1. My partner finds it quite all right if I
stand up for my own interests in our partnership.
five-point Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (absolutely)
2. In our partnership, I can usually do what I want.3. In our partnership, I can follow my own interests without my partner getting upset.4. I can settle my personal matters by myself without causing conflicts with my partner.
Commitment 1. I would like our partnership to last for a long time.
Grau, Mikula, and Engel (2001)
2. I'm counting on a long-term future together with my partner.
Satisfaction 1. Overall, how satisfied are you with your relationship?
11-point Likert scale from 0 (very dissatisfied) to 10 (very
German version of the Relationship Assessment Scale (Sander & Böcker,
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satisfied). 1993).Note. a items stem from the subscale intimacy. b items stem from the subscale esteem. Following Walper, Friedrich, Gschwendtner, and Wendt (2014) both subscales were aggregated into an overall factor called connectedness.
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3. Attrition
Attrition analyses were conducted with regard to the comparison of the retention and
the attritions groups of the pairfam sample (see Table S3). The retention rate in the overall
pairfam sample declined from 73.13% for focal participants and 71.81% for partners in Wave
2 to 41.38% for focal participants and 47.88% for partners in Wave 7. With regard to the
study sample, the design of the current study required continuing participation from all
couples to classify them as continuing or dissolving. As we were unable to accurately
determine whether attriting couples from the study sample remained partnered or broke up,
they were filtered from our sample. Nevertheless, in order provide a classification of the
current sample, we compared couples who broke up right after Wave 1 (N = 66) and who
were, thus, not considered in the longitudinal analyses with couples in continuing
relationships (see Table S4).
The comparison of the attrition and the retention groups did not reveal substantial
differences with regard to demographic and study variables. The comparison of couples who
broke up early, and couples who stayed together revealed that early breaking-up couples were
younger (dfemales = -0.58; dmales = -1.13), had a shorter relationship duration (d = -1.19), a lower
number of children (d = -0.60), and were married (Chi2(1) = 53.72, p < .001) and cohabiting
(Chi2(1) = 132.63, p < .001) less often compared to couples in continuing relationships. In
addition, they showed lower levels of connectedness (dfemales = 0.55) and commitment (dfemales =
0.58; dmales = 0.52), and higher levels of autonomy (dmales = -0.41) and conflict (dfemales = -0.58;
dmales = -0.53). In addition, couples who broke up early differed from those who broke up later
in a way that males from the early-group were younger (d = -0.65), couples had a shorter
mean relationship duration (d = -0.46), tended to have a smaller number of children (d = -
0.28), and were less often married (Chi2(df) = 4.46 (1), p = .04) and cohabiting (Chi2(df) =
18.17 (1), p < .001). In addition, females from the early-break up group reported lower levels
of connectedness (d = -0.46) and commitment (d = -0.50) but slightly higher levels of
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autonomy (d = 0.25) and conflict (d = 0.38). Males from the early-break up group tended to
report higher levels of connectedness (d = 0.24) and satisfaction (d = 0.25) but lower levels of
commitment (d = -0.27) compared to males from the dissolving group.
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Table S3
Mean and Standard Deviations of Descriptive and Study Variables in the Retention (N = 5,119) and Attrition (N = 7,283) Groups in the Pairfam Sample at the First Measurement Occasion, and their ComparisonVariable Retention Attrition Comparison
M SD M SD Cohen’s dAge (years) 25.84 8.55 25.88 8.19 -0.01Relationship duration (years)
Cohabitation status 2058 cohabiting3036 non-cohabiting
2925 cohabiting4320 non-cohabiting
0.00 (1) .99
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Table S4
Means and Standard Deviations from Immediately Breaking-up Couples (N = 66) and Comparison with Continuing Couples (N = 1,646) and Dissolving Couples (N = 319) at the First Measurement OccasionVariable Immediate break up Comparison with continuing couples Comparison with dissolving couples
Mean SD Cohen’s d Cohen’s dAge females (years) 29.06 4.72 -0.58 -0.05Age males (years) 28.82 4.70 -1.13 -0.65Relationship duration (years)
couple correlation. B = correlated change. C = partner effects.
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Table S5
Model Fit Indices for the Tests of Measurement Invariance Across Time, Stable and Unstable Couples, and Between Partners for Latent Constructs
Invariance Model Fit Indices Model Comparison
Trait Model χ2 (df) CFI RMSEA SRMR ΔCFI ΔRMSEA
Autonomy Configural 208.209 (130) 0.985 .026 .026
Weak 232.717 (151) 0.984 .025 .030 .001 .001
Stronga 402.121 (160) 0.956 .038 .051 .028 .013
Connectedness Configural 478.103
(160) 0.966 .047 .046
Weak 512.328 (181) 0.963 .046 .050 .003 .004
Stronga 792.884 (195) 0.936 .056 .073 .027 .010
Satisfaction Configural N/A
Weak N/A
Strong 4.485 (2) 0.996 .036 .012
Commitment Configural 21.955 (20) 0.999 .011 .015
Weak 33.948 (27) 0.995 .019 .024 .004 .008
Strong 57.828 (34) 0.991 .027 .031 .004 .008
Conflicts Configural 24.831 (20) 0.999 .016 .010
Weak 40.668 (27) 0.997 .023 .016 .002 .007
Strong 75.918 (34) 0.992 .035 .030 .005 .012
Note. a partial strong invariance established by two freely estimated intercepts. Relationship satisfaction is a 1-item measure and modelled as a pseudo-latent variable, so the models of configural and weak invariance are not identified and do not provide model fit statistics.
4.4. Multiple group comparison. Apart from the restrictions based on measurement
invariance, no further constraints across groups were included. The multiple group model
allows all effects to be compared across groups. In particular, the standardized differences
(Cohen’s d) between the latent means at T1 and the change scores were used to compare
changes in continuing and dissolving couples across time. To compare codevelopment effects
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between groups, differences in correlations at T1 and correlated changes were tested using the
difference between the Fisher’s Z-transformed correlation coefficients divided by the standard
deviation of the sampling distribution (see Eid, Gollwitzer & Schmitt, 2011, pp. 577f. for
formulae and reference to an online calculator tool). Differences in partner effects were tested
using the difference between the standardized regression coefficients divided by the square
root of the sum of squared standard errors (see Clogg, Petkova, & Haritou, 1995). In addition,
we considered the effect of the original focal participants’ age group by running separate
multiple group models for each age group across the relationship variables to check whether
patterns of codevelopment equally apply to couples in young and middle adulthood (see
Supplementary File 2).
5. Additional Results
Intercorrelations between the study variables and within couples for both study groups
are presented in Table S6. Results indicated that the study variables were at least moderately
correlated with each other. Thereby, autonomy, connectedness, satisfaction, and commitment
showed positive associations with each, whereas conflicts were negatively correlated with all
other variables in both groups. Within-couple correlations were lowest for commitment and
highest for conflict in the continuing, and lowest for autonomy and highest for conflict in the
dissolving group.
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Table S6
Intercorrelations of Latent Study Variables at the First Measurement Occasion for Females and Males from Continuing and Dissolving Couples
Study VariablesGroup Variable 1
Autonomy2
Connectedness3
Satisfaction4
Commitment5
ConflictsContinuing couples
1 .273*** .400*** .236*** .289*** -.266***
2 .356*** .505*** .393*** .323*** -.431***
3 .217*** .448*** .201*** .302*** -.392***
4 .222*** .283*** .448*** .188*** -.294***
5 -.372*** -.452*** -.408*** -.370*** .634***
Dissolving couples
1 .056 .433*** .345*** .340*** -.430***
2 .218* .452*** .554*** .434*** -.503***
3 .187* .571*** .264*** .634*** -.529***
4 .104 .425*** .557*** .320** -.383***
5 -.345** -.399*** -.416*** -.358*** .697***
Note. Females above, males below diagonal, within-dyad correlations in italics on the diagonal. * p < .05. ** p < .01. * p < .001, two-tailed.
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Associations of the study variables with the covariates at T1 are displayed in Table S7 (age,
relationship duration, number of children) and S8 (marital and cohabitation status),
respectively.
Scales ranges of all measures, as well as means, standard deviations at T1 and T_last
females and males from continuing and dissolving relationships, and the comparison of
estimates between both groups are presented in Table S9.
Findings on differences in partner effects are shown in Table S10. Partner effects did
not differ between both groups.
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Table S7
Standardized Regression Coefficients for the Effect of Age, Relationship Duration, and Number of Children at T1 on Levels at T1 and Changes of Relationship Aspects for Females and Males from Continuing and Dissolving Couples
Note. T1 = first measurement. Tlast = last available measurement. DiffT_last-T1 = latent change score between first and last available measurement.
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Table S8
Standardized Regression Coefficients for the Effect of Cohabitation and Marital Status on Levels at T1 and Changes of Relationship Aspects for Females and Males from Continuing and Dissolving Couples
Cohabitation status Marital statusT1 Diff T_last-T1 T1 Diff T_last-T1
continuing dissolving continuing dissolving continuing dissolving continuing dissolvingVariables β p β p β p β p β p β p β p β p
FemalesAutonomy -.05
0.116 -.105 .16
1.032 .462 -.084 .23
3-.050 .117 -.05
3.547 -.037 .24
1.008 .929
Connectedness -.064
.022 .033 .632
.043 .326 .005 .938
.077 .039 -.058
.519 .015 .623
.008 .921
Satisfaction -.011
.691 -.028 .610
.046 .037 -.032 .650
.058 .073 -.065
.412 .028 .202
-.037 .603
Commitment -.002
.953 .174 .036
.050 .110 -.012 .846
.068 .127 .171 .102 .020 .541
.015 .866
Conflicts .086 .005 .128 .088
.062 .060 -.065 .332
-.045 .211 .078 .399 -.051 .078
-.024 .776
MalesAutonomy -.08
0.068 -.270 .01
6-.010 .801 -.010 .92
6-.037 .391 -.12
8.272 -.054 .15
1-.195 .108
Connectedness -.056
.153 -.243 .003
.090 .054 .079 .436
.086 .052 -.064
.557 .043 .263
-.023 .878
Satisfaction -.013
.703 -.057 .488
.032 .295 -.016 .808
.092 .011 .153 .079 -.013 .649
-.124 .115
Commitment .091 .070 -.003 .972
.014 .752 .022 .788
.126 .009 .098 .330 .071 .123
-.061 .598
Conflicts .126 .001 .029 .750
.060 .137 -.108 .311
-.015 .709 -.028
.766 .010 .795
.252 .050
Note. T1 = first measurement. Tlast = last available measurement. DiffT_last-T1 = latent change score between first and last available measurement.
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Table S9
Means and Standard Deviations for the Latent Study Variables at First Measurement and Latent Changes Scores for Females and Males from Continuing and Dissolving Couples Estimated from Multiple Group Models, and Standardized Mean Differences Between Groups
T1 Diff T_last-T1
Continuing Dissolving Scale Comparison Continuing Dissolving ComparisonVariables M SD M SD Rang
ed p M SD M SD d p
FemalesAutonomy 4.098 0.621 4.06
30.669 1-5 0.053 .359 -0.109 0.517 -0.205 0.63
0-0.167 .003
Connectedness
4.133 0.525 4.104
0.592 1-5 0.052 .373 -0.134 0.486 -0.348 0.595
-0.394 .000
Satisfaction 8.328 2.040 7.787
2.007 0-10 0.267 .000 -0.571 1.874 -1.571 2.387
-0.466 .000
Commitment 4.886 0.959 4.705
0.455 1-5 0.241 .001 -0.090 0.434 -0.472 0.877
-0.552 .000
Conflicts 2.561 0.575 2.668
0.626 1-5 -0.178 .003 0.014 0.456 0.238 0.460
-0.489 .000
MalesAutonomy 3.583 0.661 3.72
00.539 1-5 -0.227 .001 -0.053 0.487 -0.103 0.41
7-0.110 .085
Connectedness
3.845 0.522 3.819
0.544 1-5 0.049 .415 -0.112 0.464 -0.311 0.420
-0.450 .000
Satisfaction 8.440 1.843 7.703
2.046 0-10 0.379 .000 -0.536 1.842 -1.051 2.095
-0.261 .000
Commitment 4.889 0.300 4.728
0.544 1-5 0.274 .000 -0.077 0.355 -0.349 0.631
-0.531 .000
Conflicts 2.441 0.517 2.675
0.649 1-5 -0.399 .000 0.033 0.424 0.126 0.369
-0.234 .000
Note. T1 = first measurement. Tlast = last available measurement. DiffT_last-T1 = latent change score between first and last available measurement. The ranges of the scales at T_last was identical to the scale range at T1.
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Table S10
Cross-lagged Partner Effects from Multiple Group Models with Covariates Controlled Variable FT1 → MDiff MT1 → FDiff
continuing dissolving comparison continuing dissolving comparisonβ SE p β SE p Z p β SE p β SE p Z p
Note. Age, relationship duration, marital status, and number of children were controlled. N = 1,646 stable and 319 unstable couples. FT1 = Initial level of female partners at first measurement. MT1 = Initial level of male partners at first measurement. FDiff = change in female partners between the first and the last available measurement. MDiff = change in male partners between the first and the last available measurement.
CODEVELOPMENT OF ROMANTIC PARTNERS 24
6. References
Grau, I., Mikula, G., & Engel, S. (2001). Skalen zum Investitionsmodell von Rusbult.
Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 32, 29-44. doi: 10.1024//0044-3514.32.1.29
R Core Team. (2016). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Retrieved
from https://www.R-project.org/
Rosseel, Y. (2012). lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling. Journal of