| Many college students have misconceptions about marriages that affect their likelihood of marital success. Some of the factors that affect marital beliefs include level of romanticism, quality of parental relationship while growing up, the media, and marriage education courses. The current study examined 50 male and 100 female college students who had never been married to evaluate their existing marriage beliefs. Participants were given four questionnaires to gather information about background, level of romanticism, beliefs in marital myths, and judgement of a relationship scenario. Four hypotheses were tested for this study. The hypotheses examined how scenario type, gender, parental marital status, and beliefs in marital myths affected judgement of the relationship scenario. These hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis of variance. The final hypothesis correlated level of romanticism and beliefs in marital myths. It was also found that beliefs in marital myths, relationship experience, and parental marital status did affect the participant's view of marriage. Recommendations for increasing future research on the effects of divorce, marital quality, and marital stability include examining parental relationship before, during, and after divorce. Studying the effects of an unhappily married couple on the child's marital beliefs would also be of interest. |
