Assessing Relationship Standards: The Inventory of Specific Relationship Standards

The current study explored the importance of relationship standards in marital functioning through the use of a new self-report inventory: the Inventory of Specific Relationship Standards (ISRS). The findings indicate that community couples who hold relationship-focused standards (i.e., those who ask for a great deal from their marriages) score higher on all of the indixes of marital functioning than spouses with less relationship-focused standards. The results demonstrate that two pieces of information about a spouse's standards are important: the actual standard and whether that standard is being met in the relationship. Unexpectedly, extreme standards and differences between spouses' standards were somewhat less related to marital functioning. The findings confirm that spouses' standards in the areas of boundaries, control-power, and investment in the relationship are important dimensions to assess.