AN INTEGRATIVE SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY OF MARITAL QUALITY: A CHINESE-AMERICAN STUDY (RELIGIOSITY, ETHNIC IDENTITY, FAMILY LIFE CYCLE)

KUO-LIANG LIN, Purdue University

Abstract

It has been over half a century since social scientists started to study marital relations empirically. However, theory development and theoretically-based research of marital quality did not begin until the 1970's. The major goals of this study were to develop a theory of marital quality by integrating both structural and psychological traditions of Social Exchange theory; to test this theory on a Chinese-American population; and to examine how ethnicity and religiosity affect marital norm formation. One hundred and ninety-eight subjects, who were largely well-educated, first generation Chinese immigrants, were randomly selected from ten Chinese Christian churches throughout the United States. Data were then collected by questionnaires. Eight demographic variables, four structural variables and four psychological variables were entered into a path model to predict marital quality. The results showed that nearly sixty percent of the variance in marital quality was explained by ten of the sixteen predictors in the trimmed path model. They also confirmed notions that both the structural and psychological traditions of Social Exchange were needed in order to best explain marital quality. The theoretical advances of this integrative model, therefore, will certainly improve future researchers' explanation of marital quality. As a positive and significant predictor of marital quality, the concept of "amity norm" challenged some of the immediacy and more individualistic-focused notions about the nature and effects of individual's rewards previously assumed by the socio-psychological view of Social Exchange theory. It also suggested that future research should look at costs and rewards of marital relationships as dyadic phenomena rather than individual phenomena. Furthermore, this study provided needed and new insights into contemporary Chinese-American marriages as well as pointed out many of the similarities and differences between middle-class Chinese-American and middle-class White-American marriages. Finally, by utilizing path analysis, this researcher was able to better understand the dynamics through which some seemingly unmanipulatable demographic variables such as family development stages and Christian religiosity might affect the variation in marital quality, and thus enable practitioners to intervene and promote their clients' marital quality.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Families & family life|Personal relationships|Sociology

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