Mariqual model: A survey instrument developed for marital quality conceptualized from servqual model

Abstract

Marriage has been described as the most important and fundamental human relationship in our lives. Indeed, marital adjustment, happiness, satisfaction and other terminologies that related to the relationship subjective quality of marriage have been some of the most popular topics of these fields. Research on the marital relationship has been one of the most frequently studied areas of investigation in the family and marriage field. The literature about marital quality reveals that scholars have endeavored to gauge and describe variation in a construct that is itself barely grasped. Despite a plethora of adequate instruments available as measures of marital quality, however, there is still lacking an approach, which can increase theoretical simplicity and at the same time prevents some of the perplexes apparent in the experimental literature. This paper describes the development of an instrument called MARIQUAL conceptualized from the 22-item instrument (called SERVQUAL) used for evaluating customer experiences of service quality in business organizations. Even though there have been many criticisms of the SERVQUAL model, service quality literature still suggests that SERVQUAL model has been the main standard model applied to assess and operate service quality around various service locales and numerous cultural environments and is prized by scholars and experts. Additionally, it has good reliability and provides a suitable measurement for perceived service quality. The paper concludes with a recommended survey instrument for marital quality conceptualized from the SERVQUAL Model.