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Factors Influencing the Propensity to Have Extramarital Affairs

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Factors influencing the propensity to have extramarital affairs Introduction Marriage declares a legal and socially recognized monogamous relationship between two individuals that is binding for the duration of their life together. While the expectation for marriage is that the spouse will remain faithful to only their partner, relationships (whether romantic or sexual) which develop outside the bounds of marriage constitutes infidelity and are actually not uncommon. Extramarital affairs are not considered illegal in Australia, but the actions of the infidel spouse often has detrimental impacts on the relationships and wellbeing of those around them, while also causing moral problems for society. Marital relationships and occurrences of …show more content…

Furthermore, as mentioned above, this survey was conducted in 1969, which is evident that there is a huge time gap between now and then; therefore, if the analysis is based on the sample collected, an accurate interpretation of the relationship between the variables and the number of affairs cannot be inferred for the population today. Moreover, amongst these variables, the rating of the individual’s marriage and their religiosity can be somewhat arbitrary and subjective as each individual may have a different perspective on the various levels and ratings given; therefore, these results based on the two variables may be difficult to make inferences on the population. However, despite the problems mentioned above, basic descriptive statistics can be provided based on the data collection. The number of affairs was chosen to be the dependent variable. The alternative option to this choice is using a binary independent variable, “if women had at least one affair”. Number of affairs is preferred because, firstly, it is a more comprehensive measure of both genders whereas “if women had at least one affair” accounts for female only; and secondly, of all the responses received, only 31.5% of the participants have engaged in an extramarital affair. By using number of affairs, more information can be reviewed with reduced sample size. In terms of independent variables, by referring to the Appendix, figure 1 reveals the summary of the sample; it also

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