ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Scale: A Brief Research and Clinical Tool

Abstract

This article presents reliability and validity data for the 15-item ENRICH (evaluation and nurturing relationship issues, communication and happiness) Marital Satisfaction (EMS) Scale. The scale was found to be reliable and to have strong correlations with other measures of marital satisfaction and moderate relationships with measures of family satisfaction and consideration of divorce. The EMS Scale offers an important alternative to researchers who require a brief but, nevertheless, valid and reliable measure of marital quality. It provides a means to obtain both dyadic and individual satisfaction scores. Ten of the scale's items survey 10 domains of marital quality. The other 5 items compose a marital conventionalization scale to correct for the tendency to endorse unrealistically positive descriptions of the marriage. National norms based on 2,112 couples are presented for the EMS Scale.