High School Sweethearts Beware: Does Early Marriage Predict Marital Instability?

Early marriage research suggests an association between age at first marriage and individual characteristics. Yet, few reports describe how age at first marriage impacts relational factors, such as marital satisfaction and interaction. Determining patterns among couples who decide to marry early will provide clinicians with informative tools to streamline intervention procedures with couples. To address this research gap, we will conduct a latent profile analysis to develop profiles based on several marital scales. Logistic regression will then be conducted to determine if early marriage predicts a particular type of profile. We hypothesize that early marriage will predict instable marital profiles