The perception of social problems by husbands and wives in the community

The Social Problem Questionnaire (SPQ) was completed by 132 Italian married couples who were part of a stratified community sample of 207 families. Agreement between husbands and wives on problems in housing, finance, marriage, family and social relationships was assessed by product moment correlation coefficients, weighted kappas, specific agreement indices and three way analysis of variance. The results showed that couples agreed well on the absence but not on the presence of social problems. Although husbands' and wives' ratings on the severity of problems correlated significantly, wives consistently tended to give higher ratings than their husbands. The implications of these results for social research and community surveys are briefly discussed.