The novelty of the work related directly to both the issue and the population used. The choice of sample design and the method of mailing in the questionnaire present some clear areas of weakness for the work. Mail-in questionnaires have a high non-return rate and this study demonstrates this clearly. The authors however noted that this limitation of the work suggests that the findings should be related to with a measure of caution. It is definitely possible that the persons who failed to respond have an underlying characteristic that may have changed the findings. Despite this clear impediment the work is valuable because it opens a new vista of inquiry for future researchers.
The study also has issues with generalizability. The amount of error in a sample that size may be beyond what is an acceptable limit. No confidence intervals were produced for the descriptive results of the study so that the precision of the work could not be immediately determined....
The variability within the sample in some instance was very wide as is the case of months married where the SD was 66.3 months. Additionally, the sample descriptors identified the sample as not representative of the national population in key areas, ethnicity, and SES. Thus the work cannot be applied with great certainty beyond the White, middle class community.
The study however points to the need to have policies and programs that assist couples in the management of their post-divorce conflict. While the major predictors cannot be manipulated they can however identify at risk couples. These at risk couples could become beneficiaries of a program designed to assist them in conflict reduction. The value of the work is that it can also provide guidance to legal entities for the question of property and wealth distribution during the divorce proceedings. It may however be useful to expand the sample to include other ethnic groups and women.
