Spousal concordance in joint and separate households: Survey evidence from Nepal

Couple communication and joint decision-making are widely recommended in the family planning and reproductive health literature as vital aspects of fertility management. Yet, most studies continue to rely on women’s reports to measure couple concordance. Moreover, the association between communication and decision-making is often assumed and very rarely studied. Arguably, associations between dyadic communication and shared decision-making constitute a missing link in our understanding of how communication affects fertility-related practices. Informed by Carey’s notions of transmission and ritual communication, this study sought to address those gaps with two complementary studies in Nepal: a qualitative study of married men and women and a quantitative study of 737 couples. To assess spousal concordance on matters of family planning-related communication and decision-making in the quantitative study, responses from the couple were compared for each question of interest and matched responses were classified as concordant. Quantitative results found that more than one-third of couples reported spousal communication on all measured family planning-related topics. Nearly, 87% of couples reported joint decision-making on both family planning use and method type. Partner communication was significantly and positively associated with concordant family planning decision-making in both bivariate and multivariate models. Couples communicating about three family planning topics had more than twice the odds of concordant family planning decision-making than did those not reporting such communication. The qualitative findings provided insights into discordant as well as concordant interactions, revealing that decision-making, even when concordant, is not necessarily linear and is often complex.

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Spousal Concordance for Major Coronary Risk Factors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

American Journal of Epidemiology ◽

10.1093/aje/kwn234 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 169 (1) ◽

pp. 1-8 ◽

Cited By ~ 103

Author(s):

A. Di Castelnuovo ◽

G. Quacquaruccio ◽

M. B. Donati ◽

G. de Gaetano ◽

L. Iacoviello

Keyword(s):

Risk Factors ◽

Systematic Review ◽

Meta Analysis ◽

Coronary Risk Factors ◽

Coronary Risk ◽

Spousal Concordance

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Spousal Concordance of Physical Frailty in Older Korean Couples

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph17124574 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (12) ◽

pp. 4574 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Suah Kang ◽

Miji Kim ◽

Chang Won Won

Keyword(s):

Risk Factor ◽

Married Couples ◽

Limited Data ◽

Contributing Factors ◽

Physical Frailty ◽

Frailty Phenotype ◽

Frailty Status ◽

Spousal Concordance ◽

Logistic Regressions ◽

Association Data

Marital status is an important risk factor for physical frailty. However, there are limited data on spousal concordance of physical frailty among married couples. Here, we evaluate the spousal concordance of frailty as defined by the Fried frailty phenotype and specific phenotype components that contribute to this association. Data on 315 married couples (630 individuals) aged between 70 and 84 years were obtained from the Korean Frailty and Aging Cohort Study (KFACS). Multivariate logistic regressions were used for the analysis. After adjusting for covariates (age, body mass index, education, house ownership, comorbidity, cognition, depressive symptoms, cohabitation with adult children for both partners), a husband’s frailty was positively associated with his wife’s frailty (odds ratio (OR) 3.34, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04–10.73, p < 0.05), and a wife’s frailty was significantly associated with her husband’s frailty (OR 4.62, 95% CI 1.31–16.33, p < 0.05), indicating a greater effect of the frailty status of the spouse among women than among men. Among the five components of the Fried frailty phenotype, weight loss, slowness, and exhaustion were the main contributing factors to the spousal association for frailty. In conclusion, having a frail spouse is a strong and independent risk factor for frailty among community-living older adults.

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Alcohol consumption and mate choice in UK Biobank: comparing observational and Mendelian randomization estimates

10.1101/418269 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Laurence J Howe ◽

Daniel J Lawson ◽

Neil M Davies ◽

Beate St. Pourcain ◽

Sarah J Lewis ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Alcohol Consumption ◽

Alcohol Use ◽

Mate Selection ◽

Mendelian Randomization ◽

Uk Biobank ◽

Relationship Length ◽

Spousal Concordance ◽

Unit Increase ◽

Related Variant ◽

The Uk

AbstractAlcohol use is correlated within spouse-pairs, but it is difficult to disentangle the effects of alcohol consumption on mate-selection from social factors or cohabitation leading to spouses becoming more similar over time. We hypothesised that genetic variants related to alcohol consumption may, via their effect on alcohol behaviour, influence mate selection.Therefore, in a sample of over 47,000 spouse-pairs in the UK Biobank we utilised a well-characterised alcohol related variant, rs1229984 in ADH1B, as a genetic proxy for alcohol use. We compared the phenotypic concordance between spouses for self-reported alcohol use with the association between an individual’s self-reported alcohol use and their partner’s rs1229984 genotype using Mendelian randomization. This was followed up by an exploration of the spousal genotypic concordance for the variant and an analysis determining if relationship length may be related to spousal alcohol behaviour similarities.We found strong evidence that both an individual’s self-reported alcohol consumption and rs1229984 genotype are associated with their partner’s self-reported alcohol use. The Mendelian randomization analysis found that each unit increase in an individual’s weekly alcohol consumption increased their partner’s alcohol consumption by 0.26 units (95% C.I. 0.15, 0.38; P=1.10×10-5). Furthermore, the rs1229984 genotype was concordant within spouse-pairs, suggesting that some spousal concordance for alcohol consumption existed prior to cohabitation. Although the SNP is strongly associated with ancestry, our results suggest that this concordance is unlikely to be explained by population stratification. Overall, our findings suggest that alcohol behaviour directly influences mate selection.

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Spousal concordance in joint and separate households: Survey evidence from Nepal

10.2499/p15738coll2.133900 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Kate Ambler ◽

Cheryl Doss ◽

Caitlin Kieran ◽

Simone Passarelli

Keyword(s):

Spousal Concordance

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Gender Specificity of Spousal Concordance in the Development of Chronic Disease Among Middle-Aged and Older Chinese Couples: A Prospective Dyadic Analysis

10.21203/rs.3.rs-77516/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jing Liao ◽

Jing Zhang ◽

Jinzhao Xie ◽

Jing Gu

Keyword(s):

Chronic Disease ◽

Chronic Diseases ◽

Disease Status ◽

Community Dwelling ◽

Dyadic Analysis ◽

Middle Aged ◽

Gender Specificity ◽

Increased Risk ◽

Spousal Concordance ◽

Older Chinese

Abstract Background This study aimed to explore the gender specificity of spousal concordance in the development of chronic diseases among middle-aged and older Chinese couples. Methods Data of 3420 couples (husbands: mean age, 57.5 years, SD = 8.5; wives: mean age, 55.6 years, SD = 8.0) were obtained from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). Multivariate logistic regression was used to analyze the incidence of chronic disease development over 4 years, conditional on the spousal baseline chronic disease status; and stepwise adjusting for the couples’ sociodemographic characteristics (i.e. age, education, retirement status and household income), and their individual lifestyle (i.e. smoking, drinking, exercise, social participation and (pre-)obesity) all measured at baseline. Results The incidence of chronic diseases after 4 years of follow-up was 34.5% in the husbands (727/2110) and 37.2% in the wives (882/2371). Taking the couples’ baseline sociodemographic and lifestyle covariates into account, husbands whose wife had a chronic disease at baseline showed an increased risk of developing a chronic disease over 4 years (ORadjusted=1.37, 95% CI:1.14,1.63), but this risk was not statistically-significant for wives (ORadjusted=1.16, 95%CI:0.97,1.40). Conclusions Our study identified gender specificity of spousal concordance in the development of chronic diseases among middle-aged and older- Chinese couples. This finding may contribute to the design of couple-based intervention for disease prevention and management for community-dwelling older adults.

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