The goals of both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis are described and procedural guidelines for each approach are summarized, emphasizing the use of factor analysis in developing and refining clinical measures. For exploratory factor analysis, a rationale is presented for selecting between principal components analysis and common factor analysis depending on whether the research goal involves either identification of latent constructs or data reduction. Confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modeling is described for use in validating the dimensional structure of a measure. Additionally, the uses of confirmatory factor analysis for assessing the invariance of measures across samples and for evaluating multitrait-multimethod data are also briefly described. Suggestions are offered for handling common problems with item-level data, and examples illustrating potential difficulties with confirming dimensional structures from initial exploratory analyses are reviewed.

This article reports the 4-and 5-year follow-up results of evaluating the effects of a marital distress prevention program. The program, Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP), is a 5-session program designed to teach couples effective communication and conflict management skills. At the 5-year follow-up, intervention, as compared with control, couples had higher levels of positive and lower levels of negative communication skills and lower levels of marital violence. Data are also presented on couples who declined the program. Issues are discussed concerning selection effects, change mechanisms, and future directions for prevention research.

We compared the occurrence and timing of divorce in 391 parents of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and a matched representative sample of parents of children without disabilities using a survival analysis. Parents of children with an ASD had a higher rate of divorce than the comparison group (23.5% vs. 13.8%). The rate of divorce remained high throughout the son/daughter's childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood for parents of children with an ASD, whereas it decreased following the son/daughter's childhood (after about age 8 years) in the comparison group. Younger maternal age when the son/daughter with ASD was born and having the son/daughter born later in the birth order were positively predictive of divorce for parents of children with an ASD. Findings have implications for interventions focused on ameliorating ongoing and long term marital strains for parents of children with an ASD. KeywordsAutism spectrum disorders; Divorce; Marital Relationship; and Parent Publisher's Disclaimer: The following manuscript is the final accepted manuscript. It has not been subjected to the final copyediting, fact-checking, and proofreading required for formal publication. It is not the definitive, publisher-authenticated version. The American Psychological Association and its Council of Editors disclaim any responsibility or liabilities for errors or omissions of this manuscript version, any version derived from this manuscript by NIH, or other third parties. The published version is available at www.apa.org/pubs/journals/fam NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) are lifelong neurodevelopmental disorders involving a triad of impairments in communication, social reciprocity, and repetitive/restricted interests and behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Parenting a son or daughter with an ASD poses several unique challenges (e.g., Seltzer, Krauss, Orsmond, & Vestal, 2001), which may take a toll on marriages. The extent of this toll in terms of divorce has been the topic of wide speculation in the media, with divorce rates of 80% and higher mentioned (Doherty, 2008;Solomon & Thierry, 2006), but the issue has not yet been addressed by empirical research. In this study, we compare the occurrence and timing of divorce among parents with an adolescent or adult with an ASD to a closely matched sample of parents of adolescents and adults without a disability drawn from a nationally representative sample. Family characteristics predictive of divorce are also identified.Several studies have examined parental divorce in heterogeneous samples of children with a variety of disabilities or specific populations of children with disabilities other than ASD. Some of these studies indicate that parents of children with a disability have an increased risk of divorce as compared to parents of children without a disability (Breslau & Davis, 1986;Witt, Riley, & Coiro, 2003; Wymbs, Pelhma, Molina, Gnagy, Wilson, & Greenhou...

The death of a child is a traumatic event that can have long-term effects on the lives of parents. This study examined bereaved parents of deceased children (infancy to age 34) and comparison parents with similar backgrounds (n = 428 per group) identified in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. An average of 18.05 years following the death, when parents were age 53, bereaved parents reported more depressive symptoms, poorer well-being, and more health problems and were more likely to have experienced a depressive episode and marital disruption than were comparison parents. Recovery from grief was associated with having a sense of life purpose and having additional children but was unrelated to the cause of death or the amount of time since the death. The results point to the need for detection and intervention to help those parents who are experiencing lasting grief. Keywords bereavement; nonnormative parenting; death of child; parental grief; midlife Each year, over 50,000 U.S. children die (U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 2000). The death of a child is one of the most painful events that an adult can experience and is linked to complicated/traumatic grief reactions (Prigerson et al., 1999). For parents, the dissolution of the attachment relationship with the child elicits severe anxiety and other negative emotions associated with loss (Bowlby, 1980). Parents might also experience guilt about having been unable to protect the child (Gilbert, 1997). Furthermore, because the death of a child defies the expected order of life events, many parents experience the event as a challenge to basic existential assumptions (Wheeler, 2001).In light of the significance of child death as a traumatic experience for parents, research on parental bereavement is more limited than might be expected. Most studies have been clinical NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript descriptions of participants in grief support groups (e.g., Compassionate Friends), so the findings likely have been influenced both by the self-selection factors that led individuals to seek this type of help and by the participants' experiences in the support groups. As a result, the findings cannot be generalized to the broader population of bereaved parents. Furthermore, drawing from traditional models of grief resolution that emphasize relatively short-term adaptations, researchers have usually assessed functioning for only a brief period during the acute phase of bereavement. Few studies have examined longer term outcomes, and most that have done so have used retrospective reports, which are subject to distortion when individuals recall their functioning many years earlier (e.g., Nelson & Frantz, 1996;Stehbens & Lascari, 1974).The purpose of the present study was to examine the life course impacts of parental bereavement in an unselected sample of adults who were studied prospectively from early adulthood, prior to the birth of the child, to middle age, usually many years after the death of the child. We ide...

This study examines the impact of an intervention designed to prevent divorce and marital distress. Both short-and long-term effects of a cognitive-behavioral marital distress prevention program were assessed. Forty-two couples planning marriage were matched and randomly assigned to intervention (n = 21) and control (n = 21) conditions. Couples participated in pre-and postintervention assessment sessions and in similar assessment sessions 1 Vi years and 3 years later. The intervention emphasized communication and problem-solving skills, clarifying and sharing expectations, and sensual/ sexual enhancement. Although postintervention results indicated that couples learned the skills taught in the program, no group differences emerged on self-report measures of relationship quality. At 1V4 years, intervention couples showed higher levels of relationship satisfaction than control couples. At 3 years, intervention couples showed higher levels of both relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction and lower levels of problem intensity. These data support cost-effective prevention programs for attacking the major social problem of divorce.The need for well-designed and empirically validated interventions to prevent marital distress is evident both from current divorce statistics and from studies of relationship development.Because newlyweds in the United States still face a 50% likelihood of getting a divorce (National Center for Health Statistics, 1987), almost every couple can be considered to be at risk for divorce and for the resulting stress on themselves and their children (Bloom, 1985). Furthermore, studies of relationship development have indicated that factors such as poor communication and problem-solving skills and dissatisfaction with interactions, when they are present premaritally or early in marriage, can predict the development of relationship distress later in marriage (Markman, 1981). For example, longitudinal studies have indicated that dysfunctional communication patterns precede the development of marital problems and that early signs of future distress are potentially identifiable in premarital interaction, independent of the couple's level of premarital relationship satisfaction (Markman, 1981). Furthermore, once dysfunctional interaction patterns form, they are hard to modify (Raush, Barry, Hertel, & Swain, 1974). Therefore, couples may benefit from premarital communication training before severe marital conflict develops.