MEASUREMENT IN QUANTITATIVE STUDIES ON DIVORCE

The article presents an overview of measures developed in quantitative studies on divorce. The overview is based mostly on articles published in 1980-2000 in American sociological journals. The measures proposed can be divided into two main groups: measures directly related to divorce and measures indirectly related to the phenomenon under study. The first group includes the measures which identify causes of marriage dissolution by divorce, risk of marriage dissolution, and evaluate the post-divorce adjustment process. Measures of the second group refer to physical and psychological health, marriage satisfaction, marriage adjustment process, interpersonal relationships after divorce, level of conflict after divorce, alternative relationships to the current marriage. In general, the remarkable development of measures used in quantitative studies on divorce, its causes and multidimensional effects is accompanied by the standardization of measures. However, due to many different measures applied in research on divorce it is sometimes difficult to compare their results directly. That difficulty might be reinforced by a lack of a precise description of measures used in the study which still is a case in some relevant publications on the subject.