Marital Conflict, Resilience and Structure of Power Distribution in the Family as Predictors of the Marital Quality of Women with Military Spouses: A Discriminant Study

The purpose of this study was to determine the role of marital conflicts, resilience and the components of the power distribution structure in the family in predicting the marital quality of women. The research population was women with an official military spouse of one of the military organizations, a sample of 188 married women (94 high marital quality and 94 low marital quality) participated in the present study through randomized sampling. This study was a correlational research and was designed with the aim of predicting group membership and achieving a discriminant equation. In order to analyze the data both descriptive statistics and discriminant analysis were utilized. The participants answered the Marital Conflicts Questionnaire (Sanaei-Zaker, 2007), the Resilience Scale (Connor & Davidson, 2003), the Family Power Distribution Questionnaire (Mahdavi & Sabouri-Khosrowshahi, 2008), and the Marital Quality Index (Norton, 1983). The results obtained by Enter discriminant analysis confirmed hypothesis of this study based on predicting the marital quality based on marital conflicts, resilience and the structure of power distribution (the methods of exercising power, the structure of power and domain and territory of power). Also, the stepwise discriminant analysis indicated that all 5 variables, respectively, the methods of exercising power, marital conflicts, the power structure, the domain and territory of power and resilience are the most powerful predictors of high and low marital quality among these women. Based on the findings, it can be concluded that this variable plays an important role in the marital quality of women with military spouses.