ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychology for Clinical Settings
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1497690
"That's just Typical!" A Qualitative Video Review Study on the Ecological Validity of Couples' Stress Conversations in the Lab
Provisionally accepted
- University of Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland
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Objective For research on dyadic coping – how partners in intimate relationships deal with stress together – video-recorded behavioural observations in a lab are considered to be the best way to study actual coping behaviour interactions. To date, little is known about the ecological validity of these laboratory situations. The current study aimed to ask couples directly what they considered to be typical when looking back at a videotaped behavioural interaction sequence in the lab. Methods A qualitative video recall approach was used in which interview data were collected. N = 117 couples participated in a videotaped stress communication in a lab setting and were subsequently separately interviewed in a video-review task on the typicality of the lab situation and their partner’s behaviour. Interviews were audiotaped and analysed using qualitative content analyses. Results Participants mostly viewed their partner’s behaviour as typical. However, the setting and the course of the conversation were viewed as less typical. There were gender and age differences with regards to the ecological validity of lab settings. Conclusions and Implications Results indicate that the ecological validity of dyadic coping in the laboratory is multidimensional. The lab setting seems comparable to situations where both partners have time and are not stressed.
Keywords: Behavioural observation, couples, Ecological Validity, Dyadic coping, video review task
Received: 15 Dec 2024; Accepted: 20 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Weitkamp, Constam and Bodenmann. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Katharina Weitkamp, katharina.weitkamp@psychologie.uzh.ch
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