seems to assess a couples' sense of intimacy, affection, and the strength of the couples'

friendship, all of which are susceptible to strain across the transition to parenthood.

Lastly, another advantage of the MDS is its high readability, with the SMOG Reading

Formula indicating a 7th grade reading-level, and the Flesch-Kincaid Formula indicating a

4th grade reading level.

Individual Well-Being

 Individual well-being was assessed by the Mental Health Inventory Short-Form 5

(MHI-5), a 5-item scale designed to measure psychological well-being and distress. The

MHI-5 was developed to provide a shorter measure that would highly correlate with the

original 38-item version of the Mental Health Inventory. It measures anxiety, depression,

general positive affect, and behavioral/emotional control. Each of the five questions

instructs the respondents to answer according to how much of the time they have

experienced a particular feeling during the past month. Participants are provided with six

possible responses, representing the frequency of the experience being measured, and are

asked to choose which answer is most applicable. For the first four questions, the

response choices include "All of the time," "Most of the time," "A good bit of the time,"

"Some of the time," "A little of the time," or "None of the time." For the last question,

the response choices include "Always," "Very often," "Fairly often," "Sometimes,"

"Almost never," or "Never." The questions addressing general positive affect are reverse

scored so that higher scores on the MHI-5 indicate more positive well-being and lower

scores indicate more distress. Scores on the MHI-5 are converted to a 100 point scale and

averaged, so the total score can range from 0 to 100. The Rand Corporation reports an

average score for the MHI-5 of 70.38 based on a study of 2,471 participants (Rand

Health, n.d.). For the purpose of this investigation, a "couple" score was calculated using