Identifying the Dimensions of Marital Adjustment in Iranian Couples: a Qualitative Study

Marital adjustment refers to the state of accommodation in marital relationship, by which spouses react to marital demands in constructive manners. Achievement in marital life depends on Adjustment and maladjustment causes tension. The purpose of the study was the identification of the dimensions of Iranian couple's marital adjustment.
The study was conducted with a qualitative approach during 2015-2016. The participants included 17 couples referring to Tabriz Yavarane Roshd Counseling Center, selected by purposive sampling. Data were gathered by semi-structured interview (up to saturation of the data). The texts of the interviews and field notes were analyzed by Conventional Qualitative Content Analysis within 16 month.
Data analysis lead to extraction of 643 open codes, 196 initial concepts, 31 focused concepts and 4 categories including responsibility, mutual understanding, communicational structure and conflict resolution as the dimensions of of Iranian couple's marital adjustment.
Marital adjustment can be described as responsibility (commitment and life improvement), mutual understanding (realistic evaluation, acceptance, empathy, collaborative decision making and agreement), communicational structure (equal communication, moderate hierarchy and preserving the boundaries) and conflict resolution (compromise, assertive conflict resolution and abandoning aggressiveness) that can be used in couples Evaluation.