g. irritability) are an important consideration in this regard. At the level of personality characteristics, emotional symptoms, and diagnosable disorders, depression often co-occurs with anger, hostility, and related processes. .
A current study involving young couples was examined among the correlation between their relationship quality and depression along with other effects such as anger and hostility. "Individual differences in anger/hostility are concurrently associated with self-report and behavioral assessments of marital difficulties." Researchers predicted that individual issues and differences associated between relationship quality and depressive symptoms would be inversely associated between the members of the couples examined. Although the research was implemented over a three-year period, community advertising was used for recruitment among participants at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Couples that were tested at both locations, were grouped as two Caucasians or two African Americans. The University of Utah site recruited 152 Caucasian couples and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill site recruited 42 African Americans and 23 Caucasians couples. The research was .
conducted with recruitment of young couples who were tested among cardiovascular functioning with use of cardiovascular medication such as alpha and beta-blockers. The study was also focused on chronic cardiovascular diseases such as diabetes, etc.
During the research, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale which is a 32 item measurement of relationship quality, was used as the measure during the research. The DAS has been recognized to predict marital distress and has a high consistency range from .84 to .96, and involves test-reliability that ranges from .69 to .90 from two weeks and 12 months while resulting a total score for relationship quality in four subareas.
