Time for your marriage checkup
Professor James Córdova
's research
Research question: Can an intervention program called the Marriage Checkup improve marital health?
Somewhere on the continuum between blissful newlyweds and couples on the verge of divorce are spouses whose marriages have begun to show the early signs of ill-health. These "at-risk" couples are finding their partnerships increasingly unsatisfactory, but are are unclear what, if anything, they should do about it. Psychology professor James Córdova
and his research team in the Center for Couples Research have demonstrated that a program called the Marriage Checkup can help at-risk couples boost their level of marital satisfaction in the short term and motivate them to continue working to improve and maintain their marital health.
The Marriage Checkup
The Marriage Checkup, developed by Córdova
and his team, is a two-session intervention program designed to
- Identify couples at risk of developing serious marital problems
- Identify the primary causes of their marital dissatisfaction
- Provide techniques to boost marital health by
- motivating couples to pursue healthy marital behaviors
- increasing intimacy
- increasing acceptance of common differences between spouses.
The researchers hope that a degree of rapid improvement in marital health using the Marriage Checkup will motivate couples to continue to seek ways to improve their relationships and prevent their relationship from deteriorating to the point where the couple seeks divorce.
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Evaluating the Marriage Checkup
The researchers designed a study to explore several questions surrounding the use of the Marriage Checkup:
- Could the Checkup be promoted in such a way that it would attract at-risk couples?
- Would couples tolerate the Checkup well enough to complete the program?
- Would participants report
- improved intimacy,
- increased acceptance of each other's differences
- increased motivation to work toward further improvement?
- Which of these improvements, if and when they occurred, seem most responsible for any reported increase in overall marital satisfaction?
Recruiting couples for the study
Study participants were recruited by means of a carefully worded newspaper notice. The notice promoted a free, informational health service available to married couples interested in learning about the health of their marriage.
The researchers hoped that the wording of the notice would appeal especially to couples experiencing some dissatisfaction with their marriage, but who had not yet engaged in marital therapy. Seventy-four couples responded, of which all 39 randomly assigned to the MC completed the program.
How the study was conducted
Couples were assigned either to a group that would complete the Marital Checkup program or another (control) group that would not.
All couples in both groups were asked to complete a set of four questionnaires chosen to assess
- each partner's level of marital satisfaction
- each person's degree of comfort with being emotionally vulnerable to his or her partner
- each partner's desire for and willingness to work for change in one or more aspects of the relationship
- the areas of the relationship where change is desired
After the questionnaires were completed, each couple in the first group participated in the Marriage Checkup, which consisted of two sessions (assessment and feedback) with one of the researchers. The sessions took place about two weeks apart. The assessment session, consisting of an interview, a problem solving interaction, and a second interview, enabled the researcher to gain additional information about the state of the couple's marriage in addition to the questionnaires. The second session, lasting approximately two hours, reviewed the strengths and risk factors detected in the couple's marriage based on their responses to the questionnaires and the assessment session. Finally, feedback designed to improve intimacy and increase tolerance of personal differences was provided. Every effort was made to maintain a positive outlook in both sessions.
Conclusions
- At risk couples as defined do exist in the population and will both participate in and complete an intervention program.
- The Marriage Checkup provides a quick boost to marital satisfaction. Couples reported increased intimacy, acceptance and motivation to improve. Couples in the control group (who did not participate in the checkup) experienced a decline in intimacy.
- Improved marital satisfaction was associated with improvements in intimacy, whereas increased acceptance of differences and motivation were not so associated.
Some directions for further research
The research team is continuing with its study of the Marriage Checkup and plans to
- Study the impact of the Marriage Checkup in non-white populations
- Study a larger sample of couples
- Follow up with the couples who showed improvement to see if the improvement last.
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