Keywords: Psychological well-being, sexuality, emotional marriage, rational marriage, emotional-rational marriage, forced ... The feeling of well-being includes emotional and cognitive factors. ..... contributing factors in environmental mastery.
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Reef Resources Assessment and Management Technical Paper ISSN: 1607-7393 RRAMT 2014- Vol. 40, 2014, 1
The Relationship between Dimensions of Psychological Well-Being and Different Kinds of Marriage Mohsen Khanbani*, Asghar Aghaie, Mohasen Golparvar MA. In Psychology, Khorasgan Azad University, Isfahan, Iran Associate Professor, Khorasgan Azad University, Isfahan, Iran Assistant Professor, Khorasgan Azad University, Isfahan, Iran
Abstract The present study aimed to examine the relationship between the dimensions of psychological well-being (self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environmental mastery and personal development) and different kinds of marriage in Isfahan city. It was carried out in spring, 2013. The participants included married men and women who had married 10 years earlier. In doing so, the sample group including 231 couples were selected and examined based on multi-phase sampling. A descriptivecausative-comparative methodology was used. Two questionnaires were used: Ryff Psychological Well-Being Questionnaire (2009) and a researcher-made questionnaire. Using the method of factor analysis administered on questionnaires, four kinds of marriage were identified among the married men and women in Isfahan including rational, emotional, emotional-rational and forced. Also, the results showed that there was a significant relationship between the level of psychological well-being (p≤ 0.05) and sexuality in different marriages. In the present study, forced marriage was not observed among men. In addition, other than in forced marriage which was more frequent in women, no significant relationship was found between frequency of men and women in other kinds of marriage. © 2014 Published by RRAMT France Ltd. Keywords: Psychological well-being, sexuality, emotional marriage, rational marriage, emotional-rational marriage, forced marriage
Introduction Marriage is an association which cause two persons to join together providing that this association aims at marital goals. The common kind of this association is the association between a man and woman generally established through a set of customs or rules (Hui, l. Sinika, E. Umberson, D.& Marc, N.(2010) [1]. One of the key characteristics of a marital system is the satisfaction the couples experience during marriage (Taniguchi, ST. Freeman, PA. Taylor, S. & Malcarne B. (2006)[2]. Winch, R. (2003) [3] holds that the marital satisfaction is the existence of compatibility between the existing conditions and the expected ones. Psychological well-being can be described as the level of satisfaction derived by individuals from high spontaneity, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships others and self-acceptance (Urry, HL.Nitschke, JB. Dolski, I. Jackson, DC. Dalton & colleagues (2004) [4]. The scientific study of marital adjustment has been the centre of attention since 1990. Marital adjustment is a process formed during the course of the couples' life.
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The reason of marital adjustment formation is the convergence of tastes, recognition of personality traits, creation of new behavioral rules and establishment of newly-defined communications. Well-adjusted couples are satisfied with their relationship in terms of nature and level and with the way they spend their pleasure time. They are also able to manage their financial affairs logically (Navvabinejad, 2001)[5]. Random House Dictionary (1967) defines psychological well-being as" good or satisfactory conditions; the existence of a feeling represented by cleanliness, happiness and success." When defining the dimensions of psychological well being, Ryff and Singer (2008) [6], introduce self-acceptance as a kind of long-term self-appraisal including recognition of one's strengths and weaknesses. Positive relationships with others may be defined as reliable interpersonal relationships and deep sympathy with others. Autonomy means that one is able to control his or her thoughts and deeds (independence, self-control and behavioral adjustment). Environmental mastery is the ability to select or to create a psychologically appropriate environment and finally, personal development is one's continuous ability to develop the potential powers. Psychological well-being connotes a combination of happiness and optimum performance in one's individual and social life; good feeling and effective performance (Winefield, H., Gill, T., Taylor, A., & Pilkington, R. (2012) [7]. The feeling of well-being includes emotional and cognitive factors. Those with a high level of well-being feeling, experience positive emotions and interpret the surrounding events positively, whereas, those with a low level of wellbeing feeling have a negative attitude towards the events in their life and incline to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, depression and anger (Diener, E.d., Lucas, R., &Oishi, Sh. (2002) [8]. The higher the psychological wellbeing is, the higher the marital satisfaction will be. This results form the happiness feeling rooted from higher wellbeing which, in turn, may affect all aspects of life including marital satisfaction (Ofovwe, CE. Ofili, AN.Ojetu,OE.&Okosun,FE.(2013) [9]. Although nearly all societies recognize marriage as one of the factors creating mental health, if marital life provides adverse conditions to meet the couples' psychological needs, not only mental health is not fulfilled but also it may have negative or even irreversible consequences. When their marriage reaches a dead end, many men and women lose their physical and mental health and begin to experience loneliness (Amato, P. R. (2000) [10]. While this situation has been less studied, figures indicate that divorce is on the rise in modern and highly populated cities (Minnotte , Krista , lyne , Mannon , Susan,E. Stevens , Pedersen,D. & Kiger , G. (2008) [11]. Therefore, the key question to be answered is that why incompatibility grows between couples finally resulting in divorce. What are the contributors to incompatibility? Generally speaking, marriage is one of the important factors affecting psychological well-being. But, only when both parties can manage to get wishes for which they have married, that marriage is fruitful (Horn, E. Yishan, XU. Beam, C.R. Turkheimer, E.& Emery, R. (2013)[13]. That is why a considerable volume of the review of literature of this study deals with family as a predictive factor of a successful marriage. In this regard, the criteria for selecting a marriage partner are among the most vital factors in marriage stability. In addition to improving the level of psychological well-being, marriage enhances one's status socially and economically (Hui, l. Sinika, E. Umberson, D.& Marc, N.(2010) [1]. These two factors, namely social and economic status, are of the essentially determining importance in Iranian couples' psychological well-being. Janson, L.&Veeorie J. (2002)[14]. In a study entitled marital status, partners' satisfaction and depression in old men and women, Janson, L.&Veeorie J. (2002) reported that marriage may have different impacts on depression in men and women. Also, they found that although married men were less depressed compared with unmarried ones, married and unmarried women did not differ significantly in terms of demonstrating depression. Similarly, Aghaie and sadeghi (2010) [15] found that there was a significant relationship between the level of marital satisfaction and different kinds of marriage to the effect that women were more satisfied than men in emotional, forced and emotional-rational marriages, whereas, in rational marriage, men were more satisfied than women. Given that more than 55000 couples marry in Isfahan annually (reported by Isfahan Statistics and Information Organization), 328
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the importance of making differentiation among marriages becomes clear. In fact this study aimed to examine the relationship between the dimensions of psychological well-being (self-acceptance, positive relationships with others, autonomy, environmental mastery and personal growth) and different kinds of marriage in Isfahan city. Methodology The methodology of this study is a causative-comparative one. It is also a survey research because it examines the nature of characteristics distribution of a statistical population in a given period of time. The statistical population of the study included married men and women residing in Isfahan who had married (for the first time) between 5 to 10 years earlier than July, 2013. The participants were 231 couples whom were selected based on multi-phase sampling. For doing so, first among the five educational districts of Isfahan city sixteen kindergartens were selected. Next, through informing the authorities of kindergartens (by means of mobile short messages, leaflets or calling) the children's parents were requested to attend the kindergartens in a given day. The parents were provided with questionnaires. 491 questionnaires were distributed and administered. After ignoring the invalid ones, finally 462 questionnaires concerning 231 couples were examined. Ryff Psychological Well-Being Questionnaire: In order to evaluate psychological well-being, the abridged form of Ryff Psychological Well-Being Questionnaire was administered. This questionnaire includes 18 questions and 6 subscales including self-acceptance ( questions 2,8,10), positive relations with others (questions 11, 13), autonomy (questions 9,12, 18), environmental mastery (questions 1,4,6), directed life(questions 5,14,16) and personal growth (questions 7,15,17). The questionnaire is on a six-graded spectrum (from I totally disagree to I totally agree). Marking questions 3, 4, 5,9,10,13,16,17 is inversely and all the others are directly done. Greater marks indicate better psychological well-being. The regression coefficient between 18-question scale and unabridged scale ranged 0.7 to 0.89. Ryff, C.D., & Singer, B.H. (2006) [16]. In a research to determine the reliability of 18-quectios version of Ryff Psychological Well-Being Questionnaire, Sefidi and Farzad (2009) [17] approved both content and face validity of the questionnaire and reported that multiple pattern of 18-quectios version of Ryff Psychological Well-Being Questionnaire showed a high regression coefficient with data. They reported the internal correlation using Cronbach's alpha as 0.65 to 0.75. In the present study the values of Cronbach's alpha for self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery and personal growth were respectively 0.7, 0.44,063, 0.40 and 0.54. It is worth mentioning that the sub-scale of directed life was crossed out of the final analysis because of its very low Cronbach's alpha. An example of the questionnaire question was: Meeting the daily wants often makes me depressed. The questionnaire used in this study included 52 questions to determine the kind of marriage and consisted of 4 sub-scales; namely emotional, rational, forced and rational-emotional (each of which consisted of 13 questions). The questionnaire was based on 5-grade Likret scale (1= I totally disagree to 5= I totally agree). The highest mark in each of these classes indicates the preferred selection of a partner. To prepare the questionnaire, first the marriage-related issues, general fields and certain classifications were set. Then, based on these, 60 questions in all four classes were designed. Finally, 52 questions were selected and put in the questionnaire. The criteria to select the questions included: a) showing the partner's priorities to select his/her counterpart and b) being compatible with the previous classifications. After doing the preliminary stages, 20 married participants were provided with the questionnaires. After participants answered the questionnaires, they were requested to state their views on understandability of the questions and the extent of which each questionnaire could evaluate the nature (kind) of marriage appropriately. Finally based on the obtained preliminary results and feedback points of view, the questionnaire was revised slightly and final version of the questionnaire was provided. Cronbach's alpha calculated for four sub-scales of emotional,
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rational, forced and rational-emotional was respectively 0.87, 0.84, 0.78 and 0.79. One of the questions of the questionnaire, as an example was: I selected my partner after much deliberation. Administration and Analysis After obtaining authorized permission from educational authorities, the heads of the intended kindergartens were informed of the study and they provided with the time schedule of the project administration. On the day of attendance, each partner was given a questionnaire. All of the partners answered the questioned simultaneously but separately. In order to be sure that all partners understand the questions, the issue was completely explained for them. Collected data were analyzed at two descriptive and inference levels. At descriptive level, items like frequency table, frequency percentage, frequency percentage diagram, central tendency index and distribution index for the dependent and independent variables (kinds of marriage) were provided. At inference level, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and Eta Coefficient ( as a correlation index between a categorical independent variable and an interval dependent variable) were used. All the data were analyzed by SPSS software (version 18). Findings Table 1 The frequency of kinds of marriage separated based on sexuality and the results of Chi (II) Test. marriage Emotional Forced RationalRational Total kind Emotional Sexuality Men 52 0 132 47 231 Women
41
20
133
37
231
Total
93
20
265
84
462
Chi (II)
22.49
Significance Level
0.000
As it is visible in table 1, of the total 462 partners (out of which 231 were men and 231 were women), 52 men and 41 women had emotional marriage, no man and 20 women had forced marriage, 132 men and 133 women had rationalemotional and finally 47 men and 37 women had rational marriage. The results of Chi(II) test given in table 2 show that there is a significant difference between the frequency of marriage kind in men and women (P
