Table 5.

Couples’ cancer conversations with each other and their relationship to patients’ and spouses’ psychological adjustment.

	Depressive Symptoms Change		Avoidance/ Intrusions Change
	Patient	Spouse	Patient	Spouse
Emotional Disclosure
Patient	0.01	0.00	−0.61	0.14
Spouse	0.00	−0.86	−1.25**	−0.61
Informational Conversation
Patient	0.16	0.17	−0.06	−0.05
Spouse	−0.37*	−0.38	−0.05	−0.06
Supportive Interaction
Patient	0.61*	0.02	−0.21	0.52
Spouse	0.02	−0.13	−0.04	−0.21

Note. N = 52 couples. Numbers are standardized regression coefficients from Actor-Partner Inter-dependence Models, using multi-level modeling, and controlling for age and patients’ use of antidepressant medication. A threshold of p = .20 was used to deconstruct interactions between role (patient or spouse) and main effects, and display unequal coefficients for patients and spouses. For each APIM, 4 coefficients are displayed: an actor effect for the patient (in the upper left cell for each outcome) and spouse (lower right cell), and a partner effect for the patient (lower left cell) and spouse (upper right cell). “Change” in outcome measures are two-month follow-up scores residualized for baseline scores. Because the distribution of the frequency of cancer conversations was positively skewed, we also reanalyzed the data after a log₁₀ transformation. The transformed results revealed that the interpretation of our results is unchanged, therefore the untransformed results are reported here.

^*p ≤ .05;

^**p ≤ .01