An investigation of marital adjustment levels of married teachers through attachment styles, locus of control and some characteristics

The present study aimed to investigate the marital adjustments of married teachers through various variables. During the study, the marital adjustment level was examined in terms of attachment style, locus of control, and some characteristics (gender, style of marriage, duration of marriage, number of children, whether the family lived together with other relatives, and the partner?s status of work).The sample of the present study included 390 teachers that worked in the education terms of 2007-2008, at the primary or secondary schools under The Ministry of National Education, that were in Gaziosmanpaşa, Üsküdar, Küçükçekmece, Bağcılar, and Bayrampaşa, the districts of İstanbul. The teachers? levels of marital adjustment were assessed by using ?Marital Adjustment Test? (Tutarel-Kışlak, 1999), data related to the attachment style variable was collected through ?Experiences in Close Relationships Inventory? (Sümer, 2006), and the data corresponding to locus of control were collected by using ?Locus of Control Scale? (Dağ, 2002). Finally, other characteristics (gender, style of marriage, duration of marriage, number of children, whether the family lived together with other relatives, and the partner?s status of work) were assessed through ?The Personal Information Questionnaire?, prepared by the author.The statistical analyses of the data collected through the assessment tools were conducted on the computer environment, by using ?SPSS for Windows, version 16.0? package program. During the data analyses, besides descriptive statistics, Welch test was conducted in order to determine whether marital adjustment differed according to the attachment style, and Tamhane?s T2 test was utilized in order to understand which attachment styles played role in the resulted significant difference. Moreover, whether the marital adjustment significantly differed in terms of locus of control, gender, whether the family lived together with other relatives and the partner?s status of work was examined via independent samples t-test. Furthermore, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient was used in order to investigate the relationship between locus of control and marital adjustment. Besides, in order to investigate whether marital adjustment level significantly differentiated due to duration of marriage and number of children, One-Way Analysis of Variance, and subsequent Tukey-HSD test and Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient were utilized. Finally, effect size was determined via Eta Squared (µ²) values.The results of the present study revealed that marital adjustment significantly differed due to attachment style. Accordingly, married teachers who had preoccupied attachment style reported higher marital adjustment levels as compared to teachers who had other attachment styles (secure, fearful, and dismissing). Moreover, married teachers who had fearful attachment style reported higher marital adjustment levels as compared to those who had secure or dismissing attachment styles. The results further revealed that the marital adjustment levels of the teachers significantly differed due to their style of marriage, duration of marriage, and number of children. Regarding the style of marriage, participants who reported that they got married through commitment reported higher levels of marital adjustment as compared to the participants who indicated that they got married via family-initiated marriage Furthermore the results indicated that as the duration of marriage increased, marital adjustment level tended to decrease. Teachers who were married for ?0-2 years? were observed to have higher levels of marital adjustment as compared to teachers who had ?10-15 years? and ?more than 15 years? of marriage. Regarding number of children, teachers who did not have any children reported higher levels of marital adjustment than the teachers who had at least one child. Finally, marital adjustment levels of the married teachers were not observed to be significantly differentiating depending on locus of control (internal locus of control and external locus of control), gender, partner?s status of work (married teachers whose partners were working vs. married teachers whose partners were not working) and whether the family lived together with other relatives.