A comparison study of the level of marital satisfaction among married Baby Boomers who attend Southern Baptist churches, who attend other religious or denominational institutions, and who do not attend any religious institution

Abstract

The purpose of the research was to compare the level of marital satisfaction among Baby Boomers who attend Southern Baptist churches, who attend other religious or denominational institutions, and who do not attend any religious institution. One hundred twenty-eight married Baby Boomers participated. Participants were divided into three groups by religious or non-religious preference. Two surveys, the Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale (RDAS) and the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale (KMSS), were used to measure the marriage relationship. The research indicated a significant difference existed on RDAS by religious status, F (2, 122) = 4.04, p < .05 (η^{2 </super> = .06, power = .71). Tukey post hoc tests were conducted and revealed that participants from the Southern Baptist denomination had significantly higher scores using the RDAS compared to participants from other religions or denominations. No difference existed between the group attending Southern Baptist churches and the group who do not attend any religious institution. Also, no difference existed between the group attending other religious or denominational institutions and the group who do not attend any religious institution. A significant difference did not exist using the KMSS scores among any of the groups. Secondary analyses on the level of marital satisfaction by number of years couples attended a religious institution, age, number of years married, and how often couples participated in religious activities indicated no difference in the level of marital satisfaction existed. To discover how the project's testing instruments correlated, the formula: (RDAS score * .343) + .471, was used to convert the overall mean RDAS score to the overall mean KMSS score. The average converted RDAS score was 17.00, whereas the average KMSS score was 17.08. Furthermore, results of the correlation, r (125) = 0.72, p < .001 revealed that as KMSS scores increased, the converted RDAS scores increased as well, indicating that the KMSS and RDAS correlate well with one another.}