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Show Plunge Into Marriage Sometimes Not Rational The reasons why couples make the jump from dating to marry may not be as rational as we suppose. The true motives lie somewhere between folklore and social Some scientitic and not so scientific theories range from "opposites attract" to "like marries like." Dr. Catherine Surra, assistant professor in family and human development at Utah State University, thinks marriage decisions may be a series of turning points. Surra, along with graduate student Joan Warham, will be surveying couples in Cache Valley to determine what circumstances and decisionmaking process led up to their marriage decisions. "One of the things we will be looking at is how activities change during the course of dating," Surra says. "We find that the types of activities dating couples do changes as they approach the marriage decision. Dating becomes less formal and the couples start doing more mundane things together like shopping and clothes washing." Surra says they are also looking for the triggering events that precede the final marriage decision. "The marriage decision is usually preceded by some major event such as getting a job, graduation, a short separation, an argument, final parental approval or premarital pregnancy: One of the instruments Surra and Warham will be using is a graph of marriage probability. "We will ask the individuals to recall the months or years leading up to marriage and ask them to respond to how certain they were of marriage at different points during the courtship. For instance, some couples are certain of marriage after only a couple months of dating. Some recall times when they went from being 90 percent sure to only 20 percent sure due to a mishap," Surra says. She says the couples will also be asked to explain what circumstances changed their probabilities of getting married during courtship. Surra and Warham hope the study will show some of the different paths leading to marriage. They also believe there will be differences among age groups. "There is also a theory of 'social clocks' which states that people have a definite age they think they should be married by," Surra says. Since Surra did a similar study while at Pennsylvania State University, she hopes to compare those figures to Utah to see if there are any regional influences. "Research indicates that the process of selecting a mate is not always well thought out. Daters seem to arrive at the decision for a variety of reasons. An awareness of factors effecting marital choice can help people work through the maze of feelings associated with dating," Surra says. |