A multilevel approach to the assessment of communication positiveness in distressed marital couples

Abstract

Although the improvement of communication tends to be a foremost objective of behavioral marital counseling (Jacobson and Martin, 1976), guidelines by which to define or measure “good communication” are lacking. The development of such guidelines has been hampered by the lack of empirical evidence on: 1. which communication skills contribute to successful marital functioning; 2. who is the best judge of those skills; and 3. what is the most appropriate method for examining communication processes between marital partners.