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ERIC Number: ED256990
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1983
Pages: 10
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Academic Stress and Marital Adjustment in a Graduate Psychology Program.
Hedstrom, Lloyd J.; Hedstrom, Betty J.
As the number of married college students increases, there is growing interest in the impact of graduate study on marital adjustment. In an attempt to determine whether studying psychology and marriage counseling would ameliorate the stressful effects of graduate study on spouses, 72 psychology graduate students who were specializing in Marriage, Family, and Child Counseling completed the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) and answered questions soliciting demographic information and information on the stressful aspects of graduate level study on personal relationships. The results indicated that the more units of study completed in the program, the lower the dyadic adjustment score. Despite this negative correlation, 72 percent of the students indicated that psychology courses they had taken had a positive impact on their dyadic relationship. Most subjects (68 percent) considered time constraints and pressures to be the most stressful aspects of graduate studies. These findings suggest that graduate programs do have a moderately adverse effect on dyadic personal relationships. Comparison of these results to similar studies using different sample populations suggest that training in marriage and family counseling did not offset the effects of stress. (NRB)
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
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