Recruiting Representative Samples for Marital Interaction Research

The present study evaluated a three-stage procedure for recruiting representative samples for marital interaction research: (1) random telephone survey, (2) direct mailings and (3) informational meetings in the home. To appeal to a wide range of couples, participants were compensated monetarily instead of with communication counselling. Relatively high rates of co-operation were obtained at each recruitment stage. Furthermore, the data contained little evidence for the differential drop-out of couples after the telephone survey in terms of marital happiness, socio-economic status, age, premarital acquaintance length, marital length, family size and children in various stages of rearing. A significant differential drop-out of older couples from long-term marriages in the second stage added only little bias to the final sample ( n = 120). Overall, the sample was more representative of the US general population than past studies on these and other dimensions. The present recruitment method represents a promising approach for researchers interested in assessing the generality of current marital assessment and therapy techniques.