The Time Has Come to Talk of Many Things: A Commentary on Kurdek (1998) and the Emerging Field of Marital Processes in Depression

In an important investigation of the longitudinal relation between marital adjustment and depressive symptoms, L. A. Kurdek (1998) reported an apparent failure to replicate prior findings reported by F. D. Fincham, S. R. H. Beach, G. T. Harold, and L. N. Osborne (1997). He attributed the diverging results to differences between the analytic approach taken in each of the studies. The authors reanalyzed F. D. Fincham et al.'s data using L. A. Kurdek's analytic procedures and found no change in results. A more parsimonious assessment of the diverging results is that L. A. Kurdek failed to generalize F. D. Fincham et al.'s findings to a longer time lag and a sample characterized by a rather different pattern of attrition. The authors highlight several important issues that require greater attention in developing a cumulative body of knowledge on the longitudinal relation between marital processes and depression.