Marital communication, adjustmemt and perceptual differences between “happy” and “counseling” couples

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Abstract
Sixteen significantly different marital communication practices were identified which distinguished happily married individuals from those undergoing counseling. These results provide support for and are an extension of Navran's seminal work on marital communication. At least nine items from Navran's adapted version of the Primary Communication Inventory (PCI) appear to be reliable and valid measures in identifying differences between “happy” and “counseling” married couples' communications over two time periods and across different selected samples. As predicted, comparisons between 23 couples happily married and 23 couples undergoing counseling revealed that happy individuals had significantly more congruency between their self-perceptions and their spouse's perceptions of their communication practices. Also, happy couples' marital adjustment scores were more congruent than the counseling couples'. Analyses comparing the results of this study and the initial study lead to suggestions for designing the PCI to be more effective as a perceptual congruency measure.