How Much Do We Really know About Equity's Impact on Relational Communication? Issues in Measuring Equity in Communication Research

Abstract

This study examined the question of whether the short global measure of equity that is typically used in communication research has fidelity to the manner in which equity was originally conceptualized. Participants were 100 pairs of college students in close relationships. They reported equity in their relationships using Hatfield's 1-item measure and also a component measure calculated with Walster et al.'s original formula for computing equity. The two measures correlated only r  =  .28 (students) and .26 (partners). Correlations between these measures and other relational properties that are theoretically related (e.g., satisfaction, closeness) did not provide definitive support for either measure as being a valid measure of equity. These findings have significant implications for study of equity and relational communication, especially relational maintenance, because they cast question on how valid our measurement of equity has actually been.