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Do Premarital Education Programs Really Work? A Meta‐analytic Study
Author(s) -
Fawcett Elizabeth B.,
Hawkins Alan J.,
Blanchard Victoria L.,
Carroll Jason S.
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
family relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1741-3729
pISSN - 0197-6664
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2010.00598.x
Subject(s) - relationship education , observational study , meta analysis , family life education , psychology , honeymoon , best practice , contrast (vision) , medical education , social psychology , pedagogy , medicine , computer science , political science , management , economics , pathology , artificial intelligence , law
Previous studies (J. S. Carroll & W. J. Doherty, 2003 ) have asserted that premarital education programs have a positive effect on program participants. Using meta‐analytic methods of current best practices to look across the entire body of published and unpublished evaluation research on premarital education, we found a more complex pattern of results. We coded 47 studies and found that premarital education programs do not improve relationship quality/satisfaction when unpublished studies are included in the analysis, although studies that follow couples past the honeymoon stage to detect prevention effects are rare. In contrast, premarital education programs appear to be effective at improving couple communication, with studies that employed observational measures rather than self‐report measures producing large effects. Still, given the mixed, modest results, there is ample room and a real need to improve the practice of premarital education.