Researchers commonly employ observational methods, in which partners discuss topics of concern to them, to test gender differences and other within-couple differences in couple conflict behavior. We describe a previously unidentified assumption upon which statistical tests in these observational studies are frequently reliant: whether each partner is more concerned or dissatisfied with the topic selected for them than the partner is. We term this the relative importance assumption and show that common procedures for selecting conflict discussion topics can lead to widespread violations of the assumption in empirical studies. Study 1 conducts a systematic review of the literature and finds that few existing studies ensure relative importance is met. Study 2 uses two empirical samples to estimate how often relative importance is violated when not ensured, finding it is violated in one third of interaction tasks. Study 3 examines the potential consequences of violating the relative importance assumption when testing within-couple differences in observed behavior, focusing on gender differences in the demand/withdraw pattern. Results show that these tests were profoundly impacted by violations of relative importance. In light of these violations, we conduct a more rigorous test of demand/withdraw theories and clarify previously inconsistent results in the literature. We recommend explicit consideration of relative importance for studies testing within-couple effects, provide methodological recommendations for selecting topics in future studies, and discuss implications for clinical practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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夫妻内测试冲突主题的相对重要性：需求/退出交互的情况。

研究人员通常采用观察方法，其中合作伙伴讨论他们关心的话题，以测试夫妻冲突行为中的性别差异和其他夫妻内部差异。我们描述了一个以前未知的假设，这些观察性研究中的统计测试经常依赖于该假设：每个合作伙伴是否比合作伙伴更关心或不满意为他们选择的主题。我们将此称为相对重要性假设，并表明选择冲突讨论主题的通用程序可能导致实证研究中普遍违反该假设。研究 1 对文献进行了系统回顾，发现很少有现有研究能确保满足相对重要性。研究 2 使用两个经验样本来估计在不能保证的情况下违反相对重要性的频率，发现在三分之一的交互任务中违反了相对重要性。研究 3 研究了在测试观察到的行为中的夫妻内部差异时违反相对重要性假设的潜在后果，重点关注需求/退出模式中的性别差异。结果表明，这些测试受到相对重要性违规行为的深刻影响。鉴于这些违规行为，我们对需求/撤回理论进行了更严格的测试，并澄清了文献中先前不一致的结果。我们建议明确考虑测试夫妻内效应的研究的相对重要性，为未来研究中选择主题提供方法学建议，并讨论对临床实践的影响。