Despite “boundaries” being a well-recognized concept in contemporary U.S. culture, current research does not have established instruments to measure personal boundaries. The present study was inspired by a previous Think Tank study entitled “Outside Friendship Interactions: Its Impact on Relational Satisfaction for Dating and Married Couples” (Toni Rebaldo et al., in editing), which examined the impact of intrapersonal boundaries, or boundaries one places on themselves, within romantic relationships on relationship satisfaction. Rebaldo and her colleagues found that boundaries had a huge impact on a couples’ relationship satisfaction, which urged our research team to examine this concept more closely.

Procedure

For the purpose of this study, we defined intrapersonal boundaries as “restrictions I place on myself to enhance the achievement of a goal.” Our research team limited the scope to only boundaries that individuals place on themselves and not others, in other words, boundaries that only the person who sets them can break. For example, placing a boundary on a romantic partner would not qualify as a personal boundary by our definition.

Beginning in the spring of 2024 with data collection taking place in the fall, we decided to expand these boundaries to seven contexts: Romantic, Family/Friends, Financial, Health/Vitality, Spirituality, Academic/Professional, and Potentially Addictive Behaviors. We asked participants about whether they had a boundary in a particular sub-category within each of the seven contexts. For example, a question we asked regarding boundaries with Family/Friends was “I will not be friends with people who engage in illegal or hazardous activities.” Participants then answered how permeable, or strong, that boundary was on a 7-point scale, ranging from no boundary at all to a boundary with no exceptions. 

We also asked participants to answer questions measuring their decisiveness, emotion regulation, and self-reflection. These became our covariates: independent variables that are not the sole focus of our study. Participants also answered questions related to family patterns (how much time they spend outside as a child, how stable was their family, etc.) and previous success within the seven different boundary contexts. We averaged these seven outcome variables to create a measure of life satisfaction, meaning how content and happy the participants were with their life. 

To average out and reduce bias, we chose to use a dyad-method, meaning we used both the main participant and an informant response. The main participant filled out the full-length survey, while the informant completed a brief survey only rating the main participant on their covariates (decisiveness, emotional regulation, and self-regulation).

A side effect of using a dyad format was increased complications during data collection, especially matching main participants to their informants. Through strict and rigorous analysis of responses and collaborating with those who collected the participants, we were able to match almost all of the participants. 

As with other Think Tank research studies, University of Alabama students were recruited to collect study participants, with some students collecting well over 50 participants. Consequently, our study produced a sample with over 3,000 participants (ages 18–95) from 45 U.S. states and 14 foreign countries. This large and diverse sample gives us great statistical power when determining our results

Results

After analyzing results, we found that individuals who had more/stronger boundaries had higher life satisfaction. Boundaries within the contexts of Spirituality, Academic/Professional, and Romantic Relationships had the strongest impact on overall life satisfaction than the other contexts. It is important to note, however, that individuals who had many strong boundaries in each of the seven contexts, rather than just one or two contexts, reported being happier and more content with their life. Additionally, we found that it is more important to set strong boundaries rather than many weak or permeable boundaries.

Implications

We anticipate that the results of this study can aid individuals to understand the impact of boundaries as well as encourage them to use boundaries as a tool to increase their life satisfaction.  Additionally, the results could assist counseling professionals in understanding the nature of intrapersonal boundaries and how they impact individuals’ lives. Future research could expand on the individual contexts of boundaries as well as adding more areas in which boundaries occur and examine data with a non-linear trend.