| Description |
Relationship conflict, interpersonal interactions between romantic partners in which partners hold incompatible goals or differing opinions, is a primary concern in the study of relationship distress among romantic partners. Problems exist however, with the psychometric properties (i.e., reliability and validity) of prevailing observational methodologies for the study of relationship conflict. This study reviews the quantity and quality of data collected via an advanced methodology for studying naturally occurring relationship conflict in the daily lives of couples. Continuous physiological and selfreport data were collected from 19 married, cohabitating couples over the course of approximately 7 consecutive days of the couples' daily lives. These procedures resulted in a grand total of 523,688 minutes of physiological data; M = 27,563 data points, σ = 6,682 per spouse. During this period of observation, couples engaged in 31 spontaneously occurring conflicts from couples' daily lives (lasting a grand total of 5012 minutes; M = 263.79, σ = 473.72 per conflict). Results are consistent with previous research and indicate that similar methodologies to those used in this study can be used to measure the contextual, affective, and physiological features associated with naturally occurring relationship conflict. |
