Guide to the Constructs
Introduction
Guide to the Constructs Prepared by:
Laura J. Shebilske, Renate Houts, John Caughlin, Ted L.
Huston, and Shanna E. Smith
This directory of constructs is designed to provide a summary of the variables included in a database integrating information across all four phases of the PAIR project. Many of the constructs reflect the responses of husbands and wives (a) to specific queries, or (b) to a series of queries centered on a particular theme. We provide an overview of how the data were collected and brief characterizations of each of the constructs and scales used in the PAIR Project and indicate the phase(s) during which the relevant data were gathered. We also provide information about the source of the data (e.g., husband, wife, both spouses, interviewer) and, where necessary, whether the construct is defined at the individual or dyadic level.
This guide focuses on the quantitative data that have been gathered over the years. Our procedures also produced qualitative data. Although we have described many of the procedures that we used that yielded qualitative responses, readers interested in the qualitative data should consult the separate "Guide to Qualitative Data from the PAIR Project."
The PAIR Project used a retrospective interview technique to gather data from newlyweds about their courtship experiences (see Huston, Surra, Cate & Fitzgerald, 1981; Surra & Huston, 1987; Huston, 1994). A summary of the procedures used to gather these data is included so as to make the constructs we derive from them more understandable. A telephone diary procedure, developed to gather data about the day-to-day life of husbands and wives, also was developed for this investigation (Huston, Robins, Atkinson, & McHale, 1987). The procedures used to gather and aggregate the data derived from the telephone diaries are described to make the meaning of the variables derived clear to the reader.
This directory should be used in conjunction with (a) the PAIR Project Integrated Database Codebook and (b) the PAIR Project Guide to Scales and their Construction. The integrated codebook is one of seven codebooks that have been developed for the PAIR Project:
Married Couple Codebooks (4): A codebook was created for data gathered from married couples at each of the four phases of data collection (i.e., newlyweds, married 1 year; married 2 years; married 13 years) (Newlyweds; 1 Year, 2 Years & 13 Years);
 |
Divorced Couple Codebook (1): A codebook was created for the data gathered during Phase 4 from the spouses who had earlier divorced; |
|
Telephone diary interview Codebook (1): This codebook was created for a database that combined the telephone diary data gathered from the married couples across the four phases. |
|
Integrated database (1): This database combines much of the data from all sources into a comprehensive database. |
The present "guide to constructs" is designed to accompany the codebook for the integrated database. The data for the individual items used to create scales can be found in the database(s) and codebook(s) prepared for the phase(s) in which the relevant questions were asked. Some other measures may not be included in the integrated codebook. For more information on these variables, email us. The names of the data files where the data are stored, as well as the names given to each of the questions, indices, and scales can be found in the codebooks. The codebooks also include the possible values (or response alternatives), and provide descriptive data for each variable and scale.
