Middle Eastern Journal of Disability Studies

Abstract
Background & Objectives: Marital satisfaction is an individual experience within couple relationships. Research has consistently shown that nearly all couples report high levels of marital satisfaction in the early years of their marriage, but over time, marital satisfaction tends to decline. However, this does not mean that couples should lose hope in maintaining positive satisfaction in their relationship or give up, as there are many benefits to having a loving relationship. Therefore, researchers in the field of couples have long conducted numerous studies on marital satisfaction. In Iran, the ENRICH Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire is commonly used, and some researchers also utilize the Hudson's Marital Satisfaction Questionnaire. Among these, Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI) )Funk & Rogge, 2007) assesses various topics related to marital satisfaction and has features such as being brief, comprehensive, simple and understandable, evaluating overall satisfaction with married life, being new, and having questions that are relevant to the researcher's issues. All these factors led to the present study being conducted with the aim of determining the characteristics of the Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI ) )Funk & Rogge, 2007) among women and men.
Methods: The present study was descriptive and aimed at developing a tool. The statistical population of the study consisted of all women and men in Isfahan city in the years 2023–2024. Among them, 388 individuals (202 women and 186 men) were selected through convenience sampling and responded to the short form of Funk and Rogge's Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI). The questionnaire was distributed and completed both electronically and in printed form. Initially, the translation–back translation method was employed for the short form of the Funk and Rogge's Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI). For this purpose, two English language specialists translated the short form of the Funk and Rogge's Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI) into Persian. These two translations were then compared to prepare the initial version. Subsequently, the Persian version was provided to two English language specialists to ensure accuracy through back translation with the original version. To assess content validity, 10 experts (three with PhDs in psychometrics, five with PhDs in family counseling (couples and family therapy), and two with PhDs in clinical psychology) were asked to evaluate each of the 16 items of the short form of the Funk and Rogge's Couples Satisfaction Index (CSI) with responses categorized as "essential," "not essential but useful," or "not necessary." The responses were computed based on the validity ratio formula. To examine construct validity, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted using AMOS 21 software, and for reliability, Cronbach's alpha method was employed in SPSS 26 software.
Results: Based on the results, the confirmatory factor analysis reported the adequacy of the model and the internal relationships of the items as satisfactory. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the marital satisfaction questionnaire was obtained as 0.977. Additionally, the results of the factor analysis indicate that the structure of the questionnaire has an acceptable fit with the data, and all goodness–of–fit indices are at a desirable level (RMSEA = 0.078, IFI = 0.981, NFI = 0.973, TLI=0.970, CFI = 0.981). The standardized coefficients for the marital satisfaction questionnaire are provided, and all items (16 questions of the questionnaire) had suitable factor loadings, with the smallest factor loading reported as 0.63, which is considered adequate, and all items are included in the model. The lowest factor loading corresponds to question one: "Rate your happiness/satisfaction in your relationship considering all aspects of your shared life," with a factor loading of 0.635, while the highest factor loading corresponds to question sixteen: "Degree of pleasure to painful," with a value of 0.958. The convergence based on the average variance extracted (AVE) for the marital satisfaction questionnaire was obtained as 0.765, which is a suitable value.
Conclusion: According to the findings, the Couples Satisfaction Index (Funk & Rogge, 2007) can be an appropriate tool for assessing marital satisfaction in married women and men, and it can be used as a valid instrument in research.