ASSESSING MARRIAGE VIA TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS AND WRITTEN QUESTIONNAIRES - A METHODOLOGICAL NOTE

Telephone interviews are becoming an increasingly popular method of data collection in marital research. The present study examines whether the assessment of marital adjustment and perceived responsibility for marital events yields comparable results across telephone interviews and written questionnaires. Although the rank ordering of scores on both measures was consistent across these two administrative conditions, mean marital adjustment scores obtained on questionnaires were significantly lower than those obtained in the telephone interviews. Mean scores for the responsibility judgments did not differ significantly across response formats. The implications of these findings for different types of studies are discussed.