Next on our agenda is to examine the types of events that people talked about. The two figures below show the types of events that participants described on the first daily questionnaire. Not surprisingly, the majority of the events were related to school (e.g., taking exams, doing well on a paper). However, the next largest category of event type was related to personal relationships with friends, families, or others (e.g., supervisors/coworkers). We are interested in how partner’s reactions to negative events differ from positive events, and whether the two types of interactions – support and capitalization – differ in their contribution to relationship satisfaction.
"Other" negative events included things like missing the bus or losing the car keys
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"Other" positive events included things like seeing a good movie, or enjoying a good meal.
We also conducted a one year follow-up to this study examining changes in relationship satisfaction over time. Although participants completed repeated measures of relationship satisfaction over 11 days, satisfaction is very stable over short periods. Thus, there is little change in satisfaction to predict. Results from the one year follow-up will be posted in May 2008. If you would like to learn more about other research in the SFU Close Relationships Research Lab or find links to related sites, please visit our lab website.