For better or for worse? : a comparison between married and cohabiting couples based on psychological constructs

Abstract

A great deal of research within the field of family psychology has explored relationship commitment between couples. There is a lot of research particularly about commitment in marriage and in cohabitation. Perhaps research about commitment in the engagement period is a bit less common. This research has made use of a standardized questionnaire, the Commitment to Partnership Scale (CPS) which is a tool developed and validated in the USA and in Malta. It measures relationship commitment based on five psychological constructs, namely attachment, trust, maturity, investment and values. The scale has been administered to four distinct groups which are the married, the engaged, those cohabiting and those individuals who are both cohabiting and engaged. This study was mainly intended to compare the abovementioned CPS scales between married and cohabiting individuals using a control group composed of engaged individuals. However, the samples collected from the cohabiting group and the cohabiting and engaged group was not representative enough but it did provide useful information and preliminary knowledge about the topic. The Commitment to Partnership Scale has yielded interesting results that confirm previous research about the topic but also that indicate certain issues which need to be researched more in detail.