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Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to determine gender differences in attitudes towards sleeping in separate rooms (SSR) a means of dealing with marital conflict and to explore the reasons why participants agreed or disagreed with SSR.
Materials and Methods
Research participants were 616 married people (300 men, 316 women) aged 30 to 89 years and currently lived with their spouses in the same house. They were asked to assess their attitudes towards SSR using a Likert scale from 0 (strongly disagree) to 10 (strongly agree). Two separate SSR questions were given to them: one for the respondents themselves and the other for couples in general.
Results
There were significant gender differences in attitudes towards SSR. Men generally disagreed with SSR, with a negligible difference between the two separate SSR cases (p＞.05). However, women agreed with SSR, especially with the question about the respondents themselves (p＜.01). The most frequent reason from agreeing with SSR was to alleviate conflict, while the most frequent reason for disagreeing was related to sexual issues, which showed significant gender differences.
Conclusions
Gender differences in attitudes towards the SSR were found, and the differences were examined in the context of social exchange theory. The limitation of this study was that the sexual interactive and communicative patterns of the couples who were sleeping in separate rooms were not explored.
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Table 1.
Rate of agreement and disagreement with SSR by gender [unit: % (n)]
| SSR for couples in general | SSR for the respondent's own relationship | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | Female | Male | Female | ||
| Agree | 20.7 (62) | 28.5 (90) | 19.0 (57) | 42.4 (134) | |
| Neutral | 7.7 (23) | 16.5 (52) | 8.0 (24) | 13.6 (43) | |
| Disagree | 71.7 (215) | 55.1 (174) | 73.0 (219) | 44.0 (139) | |
| χ2a=20.29† | χ2b=53.93† | χ2c= 0.27 | χ2d=13.42∗ | ||
Table 2.
Rate of agreement with SSR for the respondent and in general [unit: n (%)]
Table 3.
Reasons foragreement) with SSR [unit: % (n)]
Table 4.
Reasons for disagreeing wtih SSR [unit: % (n)]
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