ICPR Abstracts: Session 42

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Session 42: Workshop

Designing and Carrying Out a Longitudinal Study of 
Relationships: Lessons From the PAIR Project

Laura J. Shebilske and Ted L. Huston
The University of Texas, Austin

 John P. Caughlin
 Renate M. Houts
John Livingston
Anne E. Lucchetti
Sylvia Niehuis
Marika Ripke
Elliot Robins

The purpose of this workshop is to provide an inside look 
at the PAIR Project (Processes of Adaptation in Intimate 
Relationships), focusing particularly on the rationale 
behind how it was conceived and executed.  The original 
project followed couples from courtship through the early 
years of marriage.  A follow-up study was carried out in 
1994 and 1995, approximately eleven years after the 
couples were last studied.  The database generated from 
the initial project and the follow-up study includes 
information pertaining to couples' transition into marriage, 
the early years of marriage, and marital satisfaction and 
stability.  The project was originally designed to pursue a 
variety of theoretical ideas, including those derived from 
social learning theory, exchange theory, attribution theory, 
and theories having to do with roles, compatibility, and 
interdependence. 
        The workshop is designed for social scientists 
who are either contemplating a longitudinal study on 
relationships, or who are in the early stages of carrying out 
such a project. Our goals are twofold: to familiarize 
participants with some of the operational details of the 
approaches we have taken to collecting data about 
relationships; and to share some of the strategies we have 
developed to deal with problems that are an inevitable part 
of doing longitudinal research. The workshop will be 
organized around a series of issues, discussed in the order 
in which they arose as the project was carried out.  These 
issues are as follows: (a) preliminary considerations that 
need to be thought through before beginning a longitudinal 
study; (b) issues pertaining to collecting longitudinal data; 
(c) issues pertaining to the organization and the 
management of both quantitative and qualitative data; (d) 
setting up quantitative data for doing analyses, (e) creating 
case studies that integrate qualitative and quantitative 
data; and (f) developing resource materials for writing 
papers based on the project.