Dissertation Research: Marital Status and Psychological Well-Being: A Comparison of Married and Cohabiting Individuals

本博士论文改进研究探讨婚姻与心理健康之间的关系，这是心理健康社会学文献中最全面的研究关系之一。然而，比较已婚人士和未婚人士的研究通常忽略了同居人士。随着同居变得越来越普遍，这种遗漏可能在理论发展和政策制定方面变得越来越成问题。该项目将通过研究婚姻与心理健康之间关系的基本机制，调查同居关系中的这些机制，以及评估从同居关系过渡到婚姻关系对心理健康的影响，来扩大这一主题的研究。全国家庭和住户调查（NSFH）的横截面将用于比较已婚和同居关系对心理健康的相对影响。NSFH的小组分析也将在NSFH上进行，以检查在研究的第一波和第二波之间结婚的同居者的心理健康变化。虽然社会支持、应对资源和关系质量等机制应该解释已婚和同居个体之间心理健康的一些差异，但研究提出，婚姻的规范性也将有助于解释婚姻在心理健康方面的优势

This Doctoral Dissertation Improvement research examines the relationship between marriage and psychological well being, one of the most comprehensively examined relationships in the sociology of mental health literature. Studies comparing married individuals to ones that are unmarried, however, typically overlook individuals who are cohabiting. This omission could become increasingly problematic in terms of both theoretical development and policy making, as cohabitation becomes more common. The project will expand research on this topic by examining the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between marriage and mental health, investigating those mechanisms in cohabitation relationships, and assessing the mental health impact of transitions from cohabiting to marital relationships.A cross-section of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) will be used to compare married and cohabitation relationships in terms of their relative effects on mental health. Panels analyses of the NSFH will also be conducted on the NSFH to examine changes in mental health among cohabitors who married between one wave one and two of the study. While mechanisms such as social support, coping resources, and relationship quality should explain some variation in mental health between married and cohabiting individuals, the study proposed that the normative nature of marriage will also help to explain for the mental health advantages of marriage beyond previously identified