- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Hi all – I ran a survey on the same topic last year – this is a new one – please consider taking it if it applies to you, and pass it along to your spouses. We learned a lot from the last survey but I’m hoping that this one will show a lot more in terms of what makes a marriage work for couples facing this challenge. “
Marriage & Religious Change: An Indiana University StudyResearchers at Indiana University are interested in learning about marital relationships in which one or both partners have experienced a change in beliefs or identity regarding the couple’s shared or previously shared religion. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Seventh-day Adventists who have experienced their own or their partner’s change in religious beliefs are invited to participate. After 4 brief screening questions, the survey will take approximately 30 minutes.”
https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6tYdXEwogQ9PKK1https://iu.co1.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_6tYdXEwogQ9PKK1” class=”bbcode_url”> Just to say this directly, this is legit. This comes from someone who works in a setting where the information could be important for people like us and the overall church membership. I took the survey last night, and it is really well done. I highly recommend taking it. I’d even love to see some discussion here about some of what you observe. I took this afternoon. It covered a lot and gave multiple ways to look at spouse relationships. I hope they get good responses. I would love to see the results. Observations – I think they are looking at the impact of multiple areas, personal depression/anxiety, inter-spousal struggles, and personal life proficiency. I didn’t feel like it had much to do with FC. It’s asked at the beginning but not required for any of the answers.
mom3 wrote:I took this afternoon. It covered a lot and gave multiple ways to look at spouse relationships. I hope they get good responses. I would love to see the results.
Observations – I think they are looking at the impact of multiple areas, personal depression/anxiety, inter-spousal struggles, and personal life proficiency. I didn’t feel like it had much to do with FC. It’s asked at the beginning but not required for any of the answers.
I took it last night and it was a good structured survey. Some of the questions I am not sure hit on the impact of FC. I wish some of the questions would have been more focused around comparing just before and just after FC instead of when you were married vs post FC.I too would love to see the results.
It didn’t take me 30 minutes to do it. It was rather quick.
It is posted now in a few other blabernacle, so I suspect it will get a few more hits soon.
Thanks for taking it! And for your comments. This was interesting. I’m sure I would of answered some of the questions differently at other phases of my life. It would be interesting too to see the final results.
It might be helpful to include a question about how long it has been since the religious change. They might get a sense of whether the relationship takes an initial impact but recovers over time or whether the relationship changes are more or less permanent. If the relationship recovers over time they might be able to give a ballpark idea about how long it takes to weather such a storm. nibbler wrote:It might be helpful to include a question about how long it has been since the religious change. They might get a sense of whether the relationship takes an initial impact but recovers over time or whether the relationship changes are more or less permanent. If the relationship recovers over time they might be able to give a ballpark idea about how long it takes to weather such a storm.
I agree with this!
I also think it would be interesting to have the spouse’s survey attached, if they were to take it. This way you could see if their answers were similar and if they were seeing the crisis in the same way?
It would be really interesting to see the results
Great questions – I did include those on the first survey last year. As it turned out, length of time since the change had no bearing on the quality of the marriage. Now, it may matter for some couples, but it doesn’t seem to matter in general. Which is interesting too… My guess is there are a lot of couples who struggle more initially, but the results suggested there isn’t a difference between “after a year” and “after 10 years” for most. Re: matching partners – I did that the last time around as well. It requires a more thorough IRB review so I didn’t this time, but I only managed to get 40 couples out of 975 people. Which was too bad! I *do* really want to do some of this research solely with couples though. Maybe that will be interviews, at some point.
adamfish wrote:As it turned out, length of time since the change had no bearing on the quality of the marriage. Now, it may matter for some couples, but it doesn’t seem to matter in general. Which is interesting too… My guess is there are a lot of couples who struggle more initially, but the results suggested there isn’t a difference between “after a year” and “after 10 years” for most.
Wow, that’s a depressing statistic. As I took the survey, it was revealing to see how much things have changed in our marriage. The FC hasn’t been the only cause of that, but it has definitely contributed. But, to hear that time may not heal this wound is depressing!
At any rate, thanks for sharing some of the follow-up from the previous study!
Holy Cow wrote Quote:But, to hear that time may not heal this wound is depressing!
I agree. What I find doubly depressing is that an institution is partly responsible for this. I know it’s not entirely, and I know their job is complex, but they have data and potential to gain data to see where they hold some of the keys to helping heal the marriage and family divides that are causing the present outbreak of crisis.
For me that knowledge is very painful. It would only take one talk or a month long Ensign with sound articles on being okay with FC to help this to happen. For a long time I thought it might happen, now I don’t. It is an area I am someday going to have to forgive. I keep a spot open in my heart for that to occur, but I think it will take a long time.
Re: depressing, yeah. To be clear, all that means is that it wasn’t significant in terms of what predicts marital quality. In other words, other factors are much more important or overshadow any possible effects of time. Also, it’s a general result of the whole sample. Time may matter for some. My hunch is that it does matter initially, because let’s face it, it does take *time* to work through things. Re: Ensign – I actually submitted an article about 5 years ago on this issue. The editor worked with me for over a week to make it fit the tone of the magazine and be more likely to be approved by the powers that be. Granted, I’ve heard it can take a long time there, but I haven’t heard anything back since. In the meantime, I’ll keep plugging away with research and whatnot.
Also, I think the next survey I do I’ll have people round to the nearest year, and measure from there. Maybe there will be a correlation. For last year’s survey I separated them into categories: less than a month, 1-3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months, 1-2 years, 3-5 years, 6-10 years, 11-15 years, 16-20 years, etc. There wasn’t a statistically significant difference between these groups in terms of marital quality. However, it is also important to note that by FAR the largest group in terms of number of participants was the 2-5 year range, with the next broader range being somewhere between 6 months and 10 years. So there are limitations in the comparisons. I just took the survey and I was surprised at how many questions I answered in what I consider a positive way. I sometimes get in a rut wondering what it would be like to be married to someone else or single again and not a member of the church. I don’t think I’d be very good at the “singles scene” or have a very active “night life.” I was reminded I’m pretty lucky and am happy most of the time. A quick anecdote – about 2 weeks ago my wife saw me writing a post on this forum and it turned into a pretty deep discussion. I think my wife sometimes chooses to ignore my faith crisis, or maybe she doesn’t really think I had one. I reminded her that while I’m culturally LDS that I have significant doubts about much of the doctrine and that she and the kids are what’s keeping me in the church. It upset her tremendously and I had to go out of my way to reassure her that I wasn’t leaving and that I still loved her. After a day we were back to normal and if anything have ‘rebounded’ a little bit and are at least temporarily closer.
This survey also reinforced the idea that we as LDS sometimes use the church as the glue in our marriage and assume that the church / priesthood is what keeps us together. I don’t think it has to be the church and can be a more universal concept like mutual respect and love.
My $0.02.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.