From courtship into marriage: a new developmental model and methodological critique.

This article presents a conceptual, time-ordered, and developmental framework, centered on courtship processes, to study the premarital roots of marital success and failure. In this model, we assume that partners bring relatively stable qualities to their courtship that independently and in combination affect the course of the courtship and, in turn, shape how well couples fare in marriage. We argue that to appreciate the courtship features that predict marital success or failure, social scientists must understand the importance of moving beyond static variable-centered approaches to more developmental ones (both conceptually and analytically) that emphasize the interplay among premarital partners' qualities, the dynamics of their courtships, including the social and cultural contexts within which they are embedded, and the stability and satisfactoriness of the marriages they establish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]