Toward Concept Clarification: The Case of Marital Interaction

As the study of the family moves toward more rigorously developed theory and methodology, the terminology employed in relation to basic concepts must continuously be reexamined. A review of marital interaction as a basic concept indicates that arbitrary, evaluative, and noninteractive terms used in its development have led to connotations that preclude consistent meaningfulness for more sophisticated approaches. The dangers of semantic distortions resulting from such terms as Marital Happiness, Success, and Adjustment may be sufficient to justify their elimination from the literature. Until a scientific base for the family study is established, both the value-free and value-oriented approaches are ineffective