Reporting for Double Duty: A Dyadic Perspective of the Biopsychosocial Health of Dual Military Air Force Couples

There are approximately 1.5 million active duty service members in today’s military and approximately 726,000 (56.1 %) of these individuals are married. Therefore, healthy couple functioning is important for the military community. Although there is current literature on couple functioning in non-dualmilitary couples, there is limited research on the marital health of dualmilitary couples. This study explored the marital health (marital satisfaction, adjustment, and quality) and stress among dual Air Force couples in relation to length of time in service, rank, deployments, and level of physiological stress. Results indicated that husbands’ deployments, rank, and time in servicewere related tohis physiological distress,wives’ rank was negatively related to her marital adjustment and marital quality, and husbands’ marital satisfaction was negatively related to wives’ rank. Future research recommendations and implications for using a biopsychosocial approach for assessing dual military couples are provided.