What Kinds of Power Predict Couples' Concordance and Perceptions of Concordance on Birth Desires and Method Preferences?

Virginia E. Rutter, Framingham State College
Koray Tanfer, Battelle- Centers for Public Health Research and Evaluation

How do partners in committed relationships reach their individual and joint reproductive goals? One key step is either a couple’s achieving concordance or partners’ perceiving differences. The present study uses an area probability sample of married and cohabiting couples to: (1) examine partner concordance in birth desires and method preferences; (2) contrast concordance on these factors with partner’s perceptions on them; and (3) test hypotheses regarding the extent to which relative power predicts these outcomes. Important contributions of this study are the use of multi-dimensional measures of power in couples' relationships and our access to parallel partner data in order to evaluate partner’s relative power. The study uses data from the NIH-funded National Couples Survey, which finalized data collection in Fall 2006. We project to have 674 married and cohabiting couple interviews collected separately and contemporaneously from both partners using a Computer Assisted Self Interview (CASI) in the home.