Predicting marital adjustment based on Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and couples communication patterns in culturally employed women in Khomein city

Subject Areas : Islamic-Iranian Family Studies Journal

mina Dori ¹ , hassan heidari ²

1 - M.A of family counseling, Department of Counseling, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Khomein Branch, Islamic Azad University, Khomein, Iran.
2 - Associate Professor, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Khomein Branch, Islamic Azad University, Khomein, Iran.

Received: 2023-07-10 Accepted : 2023-09-22 Published : 2023-08-23

Keywords: perfectionism, communication patterns of couples, Islamic lifestyle, marital adjustment, cultural working women,

Abstract :

Introduction: The purpose of the present study was to predict marital adjustment based on Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism, and couples' communication patterns in culturally working women of Khomein city. Method: The method of descriptive-correlation research was of predictive type. The statistical population of the research included all the married women working in the field of culture in Khomein city in 2021-2022 in the number of 473 people, using the Cochran formula, 212 people were selected by available sampling method. The research materials included Spanier's husband and wife adjustment questionnaire (1976), Kaviani's Islamic lifestyle questionnaire (2011), T Short et al.'s perfectionism questionnaire (1995), and Christensen and Salawi's couple communication pattern questionnaire (1984). Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis. Findings: Pearson correlation results showed a positive and significant relationship between marital adjustment with Islamic lifestyle (r=0.752), perfectionism (r-0.299) and mutual constructive relationship (r=0.225). There is a negative and significant relationship between marital adjustment with expectation/withdrawal relationship (r=-250) and mutual avoidance relationship (r=-0.115) (p<0/01). Also, multiple regression showed that Islamic lifestyle variables 0.75%, perfectionism 0.29%, mutual constructive relationship 0.21%, expectation/withdrawal relationship 0.21% negative and mutual avoidance relationship 0.11% negative adjustment. They predict marriage. Conclusion: From these findings, it can be concluded that working married women who choose the Islamic lifestyle and use constructive patterns of communication in their marital relationships will achieve a higher degree of adjustment in their marital life. Extended AbstractIntroductionMany factors can affect the success or failure of married life (Birditt et al., 2022). One of these things that has a great impact on the continuation of a successful marriage is marital adjustment (Gopal & Valarmathi, 2020). Marital adjustment is an evolutionary process in the relationship between husband and wife, which refers to a state of adjustment in various aspects of couples that may have conflict (Montajabian & Rezaidehnavi, 2021).It seems that having a lifestyle that is based on religious teachings can be the role of a coping strategy against life crises. The Islamic lifestyle is based on Islamic teachings, which covers the scope of knowing the emotions, intentions and behavior of a person during his life, from the material to the spiritual world, for his needs in this world and the hereafter in all dimensions (Fallahchai et al, 2021) and the religion of Islam and following According to verse 3 of Surah Ma'idah, that Islamic lifestyle is the most perfect religion and lifestyle for the happiness of both worlds and plays a decisive role in marital adjustment. Because the framework of this style is based on ethics, which is the philosophy of the mission of all prophets (Salamabadi et al, 2014).Although social and cultural factors play an important role in marital adjustment, it seems that individual factors or characteristics, which are called personality, have a greater effect (Nazari & Karbalaie Mohammad Meigooni, 2017). One of these personality characteristics is perfectionism. . Perfectionism is a person's persistent desire to set perfect and unattainable standards and try to achieve them, which is accompanied by critical self-evaluations of one's performance (Stoeber & Harvey, 2016). Besharat et al (2018) in their research titled predicting couple adjustment based on spiritual-religious perfectionism and spiritual health showed that spiritual/religious perfectionism and spiritual health are determinants of couple adjustment.One of the ways to look at the structure of families is to look at the communication channels through which they interact with each other. Those kinds of communication channels that happen abundantly in a family are called communication patterns (Sayedi et al, 2018). "Couple communication patterns is a process during which husband and wife interact with each other verbally and non-verbally" (Hassanimoghadam et al, 2019). Defective communication patterns reduce the couples' correct understanding of each other, makes spouses unable to support each other, try to satisfy each other's needs, and understand each other's point of view on conflicting issues, and finally causes marital problems and dissatisfaction(Fallahchai et al, 2021).Therefore, one of the most important phenomena that requires attention and serious scientific research in today's social sciences is the consequences of married women's employment (Haidari & Dehghani, 2021), which creates concerns; Therefore, according to the importance of marital adjustment in family consolidation and the fact that we witness marital discord in families based on research, it seems that investigating factors predicting marital adjustment of culturally married workers is important and necessary and can provide a suitable basis for provide the development of romantic, honest relationships with understanding, commitment and intimacy between couples and help to understand the life cycle of couples; Therefore, the main question of the researcher is whether marital adjustment can be predicted based on the Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and communication patterns of couples in cultural working women of Khomein city.MethodologyThe design of the present research was part of applied research in terms of the type of objective, and in terms of the nature of data, it was part of quantitative research, and in terms of the method of descriptive collection and correlation method, it was of the predictive type. The statistical population of the present study included all married women working in the field of culture in Khomein city in the year 2021-2022 in the number of 473 people, and 212 people were selected using available sampling method using Karjesi and Morgan table. The criteria for entering the research included the informed consent of the person, at least 22 years of age and at least a bachelor's degree, not taking antipsychotic drugs and not having physical problems. The exclusion criteria also included refusal to cooperate in completing the questionnaires and history of psychiatric diseases. In this research, from an ethical point of view, explanations about the objectives of the research were presented to the participants, and they were also assured that their information would remain confidential with the researcher, and the consent of the people to participate in this research was obtained.The research tools include Spanir's husband and wife adjustment questionnaire (1976), which includes 32 questions and four components of couple satisfaction, couple solidarity, couple agreement, and expression of affection. Kaviani's Islamic lifestyle questionnaire (211) which includes 76 questions and 10 indicators as follows: social (11 items), beliefs (6 items), religious (6 items), morals (11 items), financial (12 items) , family (8 items), health (7 items), thinking and science (5 items), security-defense (4 items), chronology (5 items). T Short et al.'s perfectionism questionnaire (1995) which includes 40 questions and two components of positive perfectionism and negative perfectionism. And finally, Christensen and Salawi's (1984) couple communication pattern questionnaire, which includes 35 questions.ResultsOf all the respondents (212 people) among the married women working in the cultural field of Khomein city, 39.6 percent (84 people) are under 35 years old, 44.3 percent (94 people) are between 35 to 40 years old and 16 percent (34 people) were over 40 years old; Also, 61.8% (131 people) had a bachelor's degree, 33.0% (70 people) had a master's degree, and 5.2% (11 people) had a doctorate degree.Table 1. Statistical description of the scores of research variablesTable 1 shows the statistical description of the scores related to the variables of marital adjustment, Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and communication patterns along with their subscales. Based on the presented results, the mean variable of marital adjustment is (125/47), Islamic lifestyle (203/30), perfectionism (116/20) and communication patterns (110/68).Table 2. Normality of data distributionTable 2 shows the normality of data distribution. Considering that the null hypothesis is related to the normality of the variables and the null hypothesis is related to the non-normality of the variables; Because the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic of the variables is not in the range of +1.96 and -1.96; Also, the significance level of the variables is more than 0.05; The null hypothesis is confirmed. Therefore, it can be concluded that the variables have a normal distribution at a significance level of 0.05 and with 95% confidence. Table 3. Pearson correlation coefficient test between marital adjustment with Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and communication patternsTable 3 shows the results of Pearson correlation coefficient between research variables. The results showed that the correlation coefficient between marital adjustment with Islamic lifestyle is 0.752, between marital adjustment with perfectionism is 0.299, between marital adjustment with mutual constructive relationship is 0.225, which shows that the relationship between them is a positive and direct relationship. The meaning is that with the increase of marital adjustment in the Islamic lifestyle person, perfectionism and mutual constructive communication will be better; But the relationship between marital adjustment with expectation/withdrawal relationship is -0.250 and the relationship between marital adjustment with mutual avoidance relationship is -0.115, which shows that the relationship between them is a negative and inverse relationship, in the sense that with the increase of marital adjustment in a person Expectation/withdrawal relationship and mutual avoidance relationship will be less; Therefore, with 99% certainty, it was determined that there is a relationship between marital adjustment with Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism, and the components of couples' communication patterns in culturally working women of Khomein city. In the following, we will examine the prediction of marital adjustment based on Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and the components of communication patterns: Table 4. Regression model summaryAccording to the results of Table 4, the value of the multiple correlation coefficient (R) calculated between the criterion variable entered into the model and the predictor variables is equal to 0.48, the value of the explanatory coefficient is equal to 0.23, that is, about 23% of the changes in the variable. The criterion is explained by these variables (Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and components of communication patterns) entered into the model; And the rest of the variable changes are explained by other variables that the researcher did not consider and did not enter into the model, and the value of the adjusted explanation coefficient is equal to 21190. In the following, to check the significance of the regression, that is, the test of how the predictor variables can predict the criterion variable, we refer to the analysis of variance and significance F test. The results of this analysis are shown in Table 5:Table 5. Calculation results of analysis of variance testAccording to the results of Table 5, the obtained F is 28.44 at the significance level of 0.01; And this means that, firstly, the regression was significant and secondly, at least one of the predictor variables was effective in predicting the criterion variable. To determine the coefficients of the regression equation, the regression coefficients and dependent T-test were used, the results of this study are shown in Table 6. Table 6. Regression coefficients and T-test results related to predictor variablesThe results of Table 6 show that the variables of Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and communication patterns all have an effect on marital adjustment, in such a way that the share of the Islamic lifestyle variable is 0.75%, the share of the perfectionism variable is 0.29%, and the share of the mutual constructive relationship component is 0.21%. 0 percent, the share of the expectation/withdrawal relationship component is negative 0.21 percent, the share of the mutual avoidance relationship component is negative 0.11 percent.discussionThe purpose of this research was to predict marital adjustment based on Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and couples' communication patterns in culturally working women of Khomein city. The results of data analysis showed that Islamic lifestyle, perfectionism and communication patterns can predict marital adjustment. These findings are in line with the results of the researches of Muttajbian and Rezaei Dehnavi (2019), Farmani and Aflak Sir (2018), Sayedi and Shah Nazari (2018), Besharat and et al (2018), Nazari and Karbalai Mohammad Migouni (2020), Gingras et al. (2021) are consistent. The results of the mentioned research also confirm that the marital adjustment of couples is affected by personality traits, communication patterns, lifestyle and communication skills between couples.One of the most important findings of the current research was that the Islamic lifestyle has a positive effect on the marital adjustment of married cultural workers in Khomein. From this finding, it can be concluded that the Islamic lifestyle has been able to act as a suitable framework in the form of behavioral patterns for the growth and excellence of man and guiding him towards a healthy life. On the other hand, according to Islamic sources, the Islamic lifestyle encourages people to be more adaptable and increase successful patterns of conflict resolution. In the explanation of the above findings, it can be said that religious beliefs, including anti-divorce beliefs and trusting that God supports married life, affect marital adjustment. In addition, another reason is the emphasis that Islam places on mutual relations between spouses, and several verses in the Qur'an refer to this issue. Among them: forgiveness (Baqarah (23), giving gifts, An-Nasa, (4) good behavior (Nasa, 19, 15, 20), encouraging conformity (Nasa, 128), non-aggression (Al-Imran, 159) and remembering God in all Affairs (Raad, 28).Another finding of the present study was that perfectionism predicts marital adjustment. From this finding, it can be concluded that as the sense of human perfectionism increases, marital adjustment decreases and as a result, marital inadjustment increases and vice versa. In explaining the above hypothesis, it can be said that perfectionism is a constant source of stress that often leaves a person with a feeling of failure. Perfectionists force themselves to be perfect. This positive and continuous expectation is considered a source of stress and affects maladaptive coping methods. On the other hand, research has shown that perfectionism interferes with close and interpersonal relationships (Foo et al, 2017). Perfectionism is an abnormal pattern of behavior. This abnormal pattern of behavior can lead to marital problems and dissatisfaction with marital relationships and become a permanent source of stress that often leaves a person with a feeling of failure. As a result, perfectionists report much less satisfaction with their marital relationships.Also, the results showed that marital adjustment can be predicted based on communication patterns in culturally working women of Khomein city. In justifying the positive effect of mutual constructive communication on marital adjustment, it can be said that if in the relationship between a husband and wife, the pattern of communication between them is constructive and reciprocal, the level of marital adjustment between them both increases and they are more companionable than each other. They move towards each other; As a result, the distance between them decreases. In fact, when a clear, open and calculated communication is established, the relations are strengthened and when the communication is weak, these relations fall apart. The lack of proper listening and communication skills causes a feeling of lack of love between husband and wife, which naturally affects adjustment. In justifying the negative effect of expectation/withdrawal relationship on marital adjustment, it can be said that if in a marital relationship a man has expectations from his wife and a woman withdraws and has the first and last word in a man's relationship, the level of marital adjustment between them will decrease. and they go towards the distance because when the woman is made insignificant in the relationship, the marital adjustment decreases and she moves towards the distance from the man and distance, and also the marital adjustment between them decreases. Also, whatever relationship between the husband and wife in the marital relationship is such that the woman expects and the man withdraws, i.e. a pattern in which one of the spouses avoids discussion and the other blames or complains and there is feminism in the home. Marital adjustment decreases between them because the relationship between these two variables is negative. In justifying the negative effect of mutual avoidance on marital adjustment, it can be said that if the relationship between husband and wife is mutual avoidance, the amount of marital adjustment between husband and wife will decrease and both will move towards avoidance. Farmanfar & Aflaksair, 2019). LimitationsAmong the limitations of the present study, the following can be mentioned: the sample of the present study consisted of married women working in the cultural field of Khomein city, who have different characteristics in terms of cultural, social and economic aspects; Variables such as the number of children are not controlled, which may play a mediating role in the relationship between the main research variables; And finally, the use of self-assessment tools and the impossibility of qualitative evaluation may have caused an increase in bias in the answers, especially the questionnaire of communication patterns. SuggestionsAccording to the results of the research and the mentioned limitations, it is suggested to conduct similar research in other regions of the country with different and cultural groups, married and unmarried, with the control of more variables in order to obtain more accurate and generalizable results in the future research. Also, other information gathering tools such as interviews were used in relation to factors affecting marital compatibility. FundingThe current research is based on the master's thesis of the first author "Mina Dari" without financial support. Ethics Approval and Consent to ParticipateThe cooperation of the participants in the current research was voluntary and their informed consent was declared. It was also emphasized on the necessity of confidentiality of participants' information. Conflict of interestsAccording to the authors, this article has no conflict of interest. AcknowledgmentsWe hereby express my gratitude to the supervisor and all the people who helped me in this research. ReferencesBesharat M. A., & Kashanki, H. (2018). Perfectionism Dimensions and Interpersonal Problems: Gender Differences. Rooyesh, 6 (4) :73-92. http://frooyesh.ir/article-1-707-fa.html [Persian].Fallahchai, R., Fallahi, M., Moazenjami, A., & Mahoney, A. (2021). 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