A VALIDATION STUDY OF A COUPLES' ENRICHMENT PROGRAM:

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to validate the marriage enrichment program, "Couples Growing Together." This is an Adlerian based program which exists in two formats; the Short Course is a one day, eight hour program and the Long Course is an eight week, sixteen hour program. Twenty-four couples from the Tucson East Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints volunteered for the program. The criteria for couples' enrolment was that they had been married for a minimum of three years, did not consider that they had major problems in their relationship, had not been involved in a couple enrichment program in the previous year, and were not currently involved in marriage counseling. Although random assignment was not possible, later statistical analysis revealed negligible differences between the two groups. Eight couples were in the Long Course, and fourteen couples provided the wait list control group, then later received treatment as the Short Course. All participants were administered Bienvenu's Marital Communication Inventory and Spanier's Dyadic Adjustment Scale at pretest, one week posttest, and 15 week follow-up testing. In addition there was a sessional, posttest, and follow-up evaluation of each of the components of the program, plus a subjective assessment of the contribution "Couples Growing Together" makes to the relationship. The results indicated that the Long Course is significantly more effective than the Short Course when evaluated on factors of communication and relationship satisfaction. Moreover, these effects were not transitory as evidenced by the maintenance of gains over a 15 week period. Although some improvements in communication were shown for the Short Course, these gains were not statistically significant. A number of implications for future research of this program were presented as a result of the study. It would be advantageous to use this initial study as a basis for a more extensive evaluation of its different components and toward the development of an increasingly more adequate and powerful preventative and possibly intervening strategy for marital living.