In this study seven white heterosexual married couples ran audio recorders in the central living areas of their homes for an average of 10 days to capture ongoing interactions. Afterwards, I conducted private interviews with each partner, asking her or him to identify likes and dislikes (communication preferences) in a variety of taped episodes. The participants' perspectives and contextual information were incorporated in my analyses of conversational development. I found an intricate pattern of interactions whereby the women did more of the conversational work, yet were more likely to be silenced by the men.

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The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of self-esteem from adult women's perspectives. Based on qualitative interviews with 59 women, we found similar denotative definitions of self-esteem, but differing connotative views and experiences. The women identified three overall characteristics associated with high self-esteem (i.e. `voice', `self-perspective' and `concern for others'), viewing them as interconnected rather than isolated variables. We found self-esteem to be a reflexive, context-specific process, which is changeable over the lifespan. The women's constructions of self-esteem as a complex phenomenon are in contrast to traditional androcentric and essentialist self-esteem scales in common usage. Their views of self-esteem were socially constructed in dialogue with their culture, other persons and themselves. Implications of taking such a social constructivist approach to studying self-esteem are discussed.