The research for The Good News About Marriage started without us actually realizing it. In 2006 I was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist writing a routine piece about marriage and divorce. I wanted to accurately cite the numbers—which I assumed were around 50%—but my senior researcher, Tally Whitehead, and I were soon very confused by contradictory statistics. What is the stupid divorce rate? I thought. It can’t be this difficult. In the end, a question we originally expected to answer in two minutes, took eight years of investigation to unravel.

We felt a bit like Indiana Jones as we ventured into the deep jungle of complex statistical projections, completely contradictory numbers, and confusing articles by big-brained demographers in search of great treasure: the truth that surely had to be in there somewhere.

This journey of endless digging involved a rigorous focus on finding and reviewing source material rather than the news reports or summaries about the source material. This arena is so complicated and hard to understand that it is not surprising that someone writing a newspaper article (as I had been) would eventually run out of time, analyze just one angle and miss another. It is also so complex that many articles, blogs and magazine pieces gravitated toward grabbing a simple answer that looked official and reposting it… without ever realizing (as we originally didn’t!) that some of those cites and sources were more urban legend than reality.

So our goal in this book was to find and examine the actual studies and talk to the actual researchers. We did deep dives into books, think tank web sites, and academic journal articles. We called organizations like the Census Bureau and various university centers many times, to ask questions on their surveys, investigate their methodology, or confirm quotes. Tally emailed or called many professors on their research. (View the list of who we consulted with.) Thankfully, Tally’s local library is linked with the state university system, so she spent many long hours there hunting through the academic journals and many other published studies, reserving college textbooks, and checking out the mainstream marriage books.

Along the way, we kept unearthing encouraging facts not just about the divorce rate but about marriage overall. Facts we felt urgently needed to come to light. Yes, we also saw plenty of very real concerns. And we quickly found that this field is so complicated, there is often no way to nail down one “right” answer.   But we felt that as long as we were extremely rigorous in our efforts to be accurate and clear, we could get a lot closer than the often inaccurate and discouraging conventional wisdom, to bring balance to the national conversation and encourage individual marriages.

The Experts

After Tally and I first learned the divorce rate wasn’t what we thought it was, we set out to discover the truth—with no idea we were initiating a project that would take eight years, thousands of hours, and the help of hundreds of generous people.

Among those were several dozen members of the academic/research community who have been working in this field for years– and without whom we could not have investigated this extremely complex field in any meaningful way. These renowned demographers, sociologists, and other experts both helped us understand this arena and provided very useful and often customized data as we began to uncover the good news side of the story.

Several of them generously gave their time for advice and input via conference calls and even in person meetings in various cities. Even though we found ourselves questioning some of their projections (such as the research community’s consensus projection of a 40-50% divorce rate) they still generously consulted with us.

We worked most closely with Dr. Scott Stanley at the University of Denver, Dr. Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia, Dr. Sam Sturgeon at Demographic Intelligence, Dr. Jeffrey Dew at Utah State University, director Tom Smith at the General Social Survey, and the incredibly skilled and helpful staff of the U.S. Census Bureau ACS and SIPP offices (who, due to policy, preferred not be named). We also consulted with and received information from Dr. Paul Amato at Penn State University, Dr. Dana Rotz at Mathematica Policy Research, Dr. Linda Waite at the University of Chicago, Dr. David Olson at PREPARE/ENRICH, Dr. Steven Beach at the University of Georgia, Dr. Kelly Raley at the University of Texas, Dr. Betsey Stevenson at the University of Michigan, Dr. Annette Mahoney at Bowling Green State University, Dr. Christopher Ellison at the University of Texas at San Antonio, Dr. Tim Heaton at Brigham Young University, Dr. Sheela Kennedy at the University of Minnesota, Dr. Bradley Wright at the University of Connecticut, Dr. Francesca Adler-Baeder and Dr. Chelsea Garneau at Auburn University. We are also grateful for Dr. Andrew Cherlin at Johns Hopkins University; though he was on sabbatical and not directly interviewed, we heavily drew upon his work.

In addition to the academic community, we also worked with several other researchers working in the marriage-and-family community, whose help was very valuable in our learning and investigation process. These include Clint Jenkin and Pam Jacob at Barna Group, who worked with us many months to dig out the real answers about churchgoers; Dr. Chuck Cowan at Analytic Focus and Felicia Rogers and the team at Decision Analyst, whose expert help and support of my own research surveys has been invaluable over the years; Glenn Stanton at Focus on the Family; Pat Fagan at the Family Research Council; Diane Mannina at Heritage Foundation; Glenn Gritzon at FamilyLife; Dr. Peter Larson at Tango Group; and Randy Hicks and Jamie Lord with the Georgia Center for Opportunity.

Again, even though in some cases we ended up viewing the data in different ways, all these researchers were supportive of the big picture of unearthing the very real and accurate good news about marriage that exists but is often overlooked. We are very grateful for their input.