respond paper

Bethany Fulcher

Professor Custer

Sociology 101

7/22/2018

Summary of an Academic Journal Article

The journal that I have decided to research served to answer the question of, to what extent are young adults engaging in “Relationship Work” with a partner and with a friend?”. These researchers focused on the differences that these behaviors caused within creating a functioning relationship that lasts within young couples. They decided to focus on dating couples because of a previous article about married couples that stated that relationships are greatly affected by outside factors like friends and family because they can influence the individual to believe that their status is either good or bad, (Proulx, Helms & Payne). This made the researchers believe there was still a piece missing in the study and that piece was young and fresh relationships. They wanted to know how this relationship work could change the overall wellbeing of that couple and how happy the two individuals were within it.

Before they surveyed the individuals, the authors came up with a few hypotheses. The first hypothesis that they explored was that females would be more willing to talk to their friends about relationship problems than their partners and that males would be the exact opposite, talking to their significant others more than their friends. The second hypothesis that they believed would be true is that unlike the study that observed older couples, younger relationships would struggle greatly if they were talking to their friends more than each other. This was assumed because the artists realized that older people tend to pick friends that would be more supportive of their relationships while younger people choose friends that trend to have information that can be “incorrect, misleading, and unsupportive.”(Jensen & Rauer).

The main factor that they were testing, or the dependent variable, was a combination of three different areas: happiness, commitment, and relationship quality. They used the quantitative method of surveying to sample individuals that both volunteered and were convenient to the authors. In other words, the researchers put out a questionnaire as extra credit at a university in the south. With the three areas mentioned earlier, the survey had scales that the young individual could pick whether where they found themselves feeling when answering the question. Since they used the survey method to research these students, it was easier to study a large amount of people, but it really depends on the student being honest with their answers. The fact that they used two sampling techniques provided them with the opportunity to easily get a wider net of people taking this survey, but for the most part it was very biased information, (Lecture 4).

After they analyzed all the results, they realized that surprisingly the amount of relationship work done from the female is the same as the male in the relationship. This was shocking because in earlier studies that they had read about, females are more romantically expressive than males but this showed otherwise. This could be because the sample was faulty and that most of the males that took it seemed to be happy and committed to their partners, leading to them being more expressive to their partner and their friends about that relationship. To answer the actual research question, results have shown that partners, who talk to each other about their problems more than other people, are proven to have an increase in happiness, commitment, and relationship quality. Young couples that talked to friends more struggled a lot with their relationship and didn’t deal with problems in the right way. Interestingly, studies showed that the relationship can still thrive and is even sometimes better off when the couple does relationship work with each other instead of doing both and talking to others.

I have already stated some limitations to this survey, but there are more involving the sample that was collected to take the questionnaire. One big issue was that most of the participants were female. Only 23% of the people were male, so the analysis of this data could be biased or not completely right for all types of men out there. The other major factor that limits this research is that the sample mainly consisted of Caucasian people which means that the results does not include a variety of cultures and traditions to be involved, (Shook, Jones, & Forehand).

To wrap it up, the researchers, Jakob F. Jensen and Amy J. Rauer, put together a questionnaire to further investigate how relationship work behaviors relates to romantic functioning. They did this by surveying young individuals in relationships and seeing how happy they were depending on if they talked mainly to their significant other about problems, or their closest friends. They found that those who worked their problems out with the partner instead of talking to their friends, were the happiest in their relationships and were committed to it.

Works Cited:

Jensen, Jakob F. & Rauer, Amy J. (2014). Turning inward versus outward: Relationship work in young adults and romantic functioning. Personal Relationships, 21, 451-467.

Shook, S. E., Jones, D. J., & Forehand, R. ( 2010 ). The mother‐coparent relationship and youth adjustment: A study of African‐American single‐mother families. Journal of Family Psychology, 24, 243 – 251.

Proulx, C. M., Helms, H. M., & Payne, C. C. ( 2004 ). Wives' domain specific “marriage work” with friends and spouses: Links to marital quality. Family Relations, 53, 393 – 404