For the past 15 years, Dr. Karney has been studying change and stability in intimate relationships, especially in the early years of marriage. His research has focused on cognitive and behavioral processes of relationship maintenance, and especially the ways that stress external to the couple can facilitate or constrain those processes. His research relies upon longitudinal data, repeated measures, multi-level modeling, and observational coding of couple interactions. To address these issues, his ongoing longitudinal research is examining Hispanic, black, and white newlywed couples from low-income neighborhoods, as well as military families facing deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
