RELATIONSHIP QUALITY AS A PREDICTOR OF COGNITIVE FAILURE AND PERCEIVED STRESS IN MARRIED WOMEN WITH OVERSEAS-MIGRANT HUSBANDS

Abstract

The phenomenon of transnational marriage is taking root in many devel-oping countries. Nonetheless, only few studies have addressed the subject of the impact of marital quality on the cognitive abilities and emotional health of the wives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the rela-tionship between relationship quality's positive and negative dimensions in prediction of cognitive failures and perceived stress in married women with husbands working abroad and to determine whether there are differ-ential effects of each of the two dimensions. The design of the study was cross sectional quantitative and sample consisted 300 married women from Gujrat (Pakistan) with husbands who were working abroad. The Positive and Negative Relationship Quality Scale (PN-RQ), the Cogni-tive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ-15) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) were all completed by the participants. Pearson correlations and multiple regression analyses were applied to analyze data. Results indicat-ed that positive relationship quality was a significant negative predictor of both cognitive failures (p < .001, β = -.556) and perceived stress (p < .001, β = -.693), and negative relationship quality was a significant positive predictor of both (p < .001, β = .386 for cognitive failures; β = .233 for perceived stress), with models accounting for 87.5% and 84.9% variance respectively. Positive relationship quality was found to be a bet-ter predictor of both outcomes. Perceived stress had a strong positive corre-lation with cognitive failures (r = .927, p< .001). Overall, these results suggest that relationship quality, especially positive aspects—warmth, emo-tional support and intimacy—is an important protective factor regarding women's cognitive and emotional functioning in transnational marriage. The study demonstrates the need to strengthen the relationship of the left-behind wives in migration affected families with relationship strengthen-ing interventions and supportive policies.