Title

The Effectiveness of the Use of the Big Five Personality and Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work on Couples’ Relationship Satisfaction

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D)

Department

Counseling

Date of Award

Summer 2021

Abstract

Research shows that couples who are satisfied with their relationship are better able to understand, honor, and respect each other and their marriage while many unhappy couples may experience psychological difficulties. Individuals have unique personalities, and these patterns of behavior impacts their relationships. Because individuals frequently lack tools to understand themselves and improve their communication skills couples are increasingly faced with problems in their relationship.The Big Five Personality Test is an inventory that can be used to increase partners awareness of each other’s personality traits. The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) measures couple’s relationship satisfaction. The Gottman Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is an approach to develop couples’ communication skills. In this experimental study, the DAS was administered to 60 couples to get a measure on their relationship satisfaction. All couples took the Big Five Personality Test, and they were informed of their personality traits. In the next step, DAS was administered to 60 couples for the second time. Then participants were randomly assigned into two experimental (30 couple) and control (30 couple) groups. The experimental group received three group educational intervention via Zoom Webinar on the Gottman Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. DAS administrated for the third time. The results were analyzed. Across all participants, DAS scores improved over the three administrations of the procedure (M1 = 75.64, M2 = 90.14, M3 = 100.33), F (1.89, 232) = 590.242, p < .001, partial eta squared = 0.84). The interaction between DAS sequence and treatment group was significant, F (1.89,118) = 100.42, p <.001. By contrast, on the second DAS administration (experimental M = 86.26 and control M = 94.01). F (1,118) = 17.85, p, = .001. By the time of the third DAS administration (experimental M = 100.32, while the control M = 94.15.

Advisor

Linda Ball

Subject Categories

Counseling | Social and Behavioral Sciences

COinS