title: Conceptualizing and Validating Marital Quality in Beijing: A Pilot Study.
abstract: Since the inception of the economic reform, marital relationship in urban China has undergone dramatic transformations. Though the burgeoning body of scholarly research has demonstrated that marital quality has increasingly become an important aspect of family life among married persons in urban China, both the conceptualization and measurement of marital quality remain underdeveloped. The purpose of this pilot study is to develop and validate a comprehensive and culturally appropriate marital quality scale, namely the Chinese Marital Quality Scale (CMQS). Results from the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) conducted on a sample of 387 married persons from Beijing indicate that the CMQS can be conceptualized as a two-factorial and multidimensional construct, encompassing marital happiness, marital interaction, marital disagreement, marital problem, and marital instability. Additional statistical analyses also indicate that the CMQS has exhibited satisfactory reliability and concurrent validity. It is thus concluded that the CMQS is a reliable and valid instrument to measure marital quality in contemporary Beijing and possibly in other Chinese cities.
authors.affiliation: Department of Social Work, The School of Sociology and Population Studies, Renmin University of China, No. 59, Zhongguancun Street, Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huiping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Xiaohe
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Sandra K M
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Tsang
keywords: Chinese Marital Quality Scale; Chinese marriage; Martial quality; Urban China