Conceptualizing and Measuring Romantic Relationship Quality in Adulthood
Romantic relationships—which include dating, cohabiting, and marriage—play a central role in many individuals’ lives. Most people experience one or more romantic relationships in their lifetime and many adult households are organized around romantic relationships. Research has established that high-quality, stable romantic relationships are generally linked to increased well-being among individuals, although literature suggests this can vary across age, gender, and type of relationship.
Many romantic relationships result in children, who are also affected by the quality of their parents’ relationships. Although more limited than research on how family structure (e.g., whether parents live together or are married) is associated with child outcomes, research generally shows that children whose parents report better relationship quality tend to experience improved health and well-being throughout their lives relative to their counterparts whose parents have poorer relationship quality. Research also shows that much of the link between parental relationship quality and children’s health is due to greater parental involvement and supportiveness in higher-quality relationships.
Given the importance of healthy relationships for adult and child well-being, many social service programs exist to help adults and couples improve the quality and stability of their current and future relationships. However, while relationship stability is relatively straightforward to understand and measure (e.g., do couples stay together or break up?), relationship quality is much more complex to conceptualize and measure.
This brief summarizes recent peer-reviewed research about the meaning and measurement of adult romantic relationship quality in the United States.[1] We describe how relationship quality is conceptualized and measured within the literature, including an overview of multiple dimensions of relationship quality. We also review some of the ways relationship quality can vary by relationship type (for instance, whether someone is cohabiting with or married to their partner), parenthood, and gender. Finally, we discuss the implications of this body of work for future research and practice.
This brief was created by the Marriage Strengthening Research & Dissemination Center, a partnership between Child Trends, the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University, and Public Strategies.
Highlights
Conceptualization and measurement of relationship quality
- Researchers use a range of measures to assess relationship quality, such as happiness, affection, commitment, trust, communication, satisfaction, disagreement, and conflict.
- An individual may have different types of experiences in their relationship.
- Individuals within a couple may evaluate the quality of their relationship differently.
Correlates of relationship quality
- In general, married individuals report the highest relationship quality compared with those in cohabiting and dating relationships, although this is partially driven by the fact that those in lower-quality relationships marry their partners less often.
- Individuals with more socioeconomic resources—especially higher levels of education—tend to evaluate their relationship quality more favorably than those with fewer resources.
- Male partners tend to rate their relationships more favorably than female partners.
Implications for future research and practice
- More consistent measurement of relationship quality across surveys would help establish and verify trends across groups and over time.
- Further research is needed on how well existing measures capture aspects of relationship quality across diverse cultures, contexts, and relationship characteristics.
- Better alignment is needed between program content, participant characteristics, and the outcomes examined in evaluations of programs that address healthy relationships.
Methods
The information in this brief is based on a review of professional and scientific journal articles, book chapters, and reports published primarily in or after 2010 that emphasized measurement of relationship quality. Trend data from earlier than 2010 are included where possible. Additionally, some of the studies use data collected prior to 2010. Whenever possible, we highlight studies that use nationally representative data. However, we also include some key qualitative studies, which use smaller samples to achieve a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of relationship quality.
We mention the following data sets in this review, typically by their acronym:
- Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS)
- General Social Survey (GSS)
- National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health)
- National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79)
- National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97)
- National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP)
- Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
- National Survey of Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV)
- Supporting Healthy Marriage Project (SHM)
- Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS)
Our review is limited to different-gender relationships due to limited research to date on same-gender relationships using large-scale surveys. Because we review published research studies, information is limited to the foci and definitions used by other researchers.
For detailed information on the types of measures of relationship quality obtained in publicly available surveys—including many of the surveys used in the research reviewed for this brief—see this Relationship Quality Measures Data Tool, which is a web-based, interactive, and searchable catalog of the relationship quality measures available in several large social surveys. This tool is designed to help users identify which publicly available data sources include specific measures of relationship quality, with details about the years in which the questions were asked and the composition of the respondents.
Footnote
[1] A separate brief examines relationship behaviors and quality among adolescent and young adults.
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Suggested Citation
Hemez, P., Guzzo, K. B., Brown, S. L., Manning, W. D., & Westrick-Payne, K. K. (2023). Conceptualizing and measuring romantic relationship quality in adulthood. Marriage Strengthening Research and Dissemination Center. URL/DOI
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