Best Practices in Relationship Education Focused on Intimate Relationships

• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Author: Scott M. Stanley,Ryan G. Carlson,Galena K. Rhoades,Howard J. Markman,Lane L. Ritchie,Alan J. Hawkins
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12419

S M. SUniversity of Denver

R G. CUniversity of South Carolina

G K. R, H J. M,  L L. RUniversity of Denver

A J. HBrigham Young University

Best Practices in Relationship Education Focused on

Intimate Relationships

Relationship education is widely used to help

people develop and sustain healthy romantic

relationships. We rst provide a review on the

current state of evidence and key issues in the

eld, laying a foundation for suggesting specic

best practices in relationship education. We

focus on services provided to couples but also

address the burgeoning eld of relationship

education with individuals. Although there

are many gaps in the knowledge informing

best practices—such as mechanisms of effect

and dose—decades of research and experience

provide a strong basis for specic recommen-

dations. The hallmark of an evidence-based,

best-practice approach lies in making thought-

ful decisions based on current knowledge, the

goals of the effort, the population served, and

available resources.

Healthy romantic relationships and marriages

are vital to the well-being of adults, families, and

Department of Psychology, University of Denver,

2135 S. Race Street, University Park, CO 80208

(scott.stanley@du.edu).

© 2019 The Authors. Family Relations published by Wiley

Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of National Council on Family

Relations.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative

Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribu-

tion and reproduction in any medium, provided the original

work is properly cited.

Key Words: family life education, marriage enrichment,

marital intervention, prevention–intervention programsand

issues.

children. Adults in healthy relationships gener-

ally live longer (Ross, Mirowsky, & Goldsteen,

1990), have more resources (Dakin & Wampler,

2008), and cope better with psychological dis-

tress (Fincham & Beach, 2010), and children

benet from having parents who are in healthy

relationships, together (e.g., Amato, 2001).

Relationship education has emerged over the

past decades as one way to help people develop

and sustain healthy relationships.

This article addresses issues and strategies for

deploying best practices in relationship educa-

tion with adults. We use the term relationship

education rather than couple relationship edu-

cation because our discussion includes educa-

tional interventions directed at adults’ romantic

relationships, whether services are delivered to

couples or individuals, and regardless of whether

those individuals are currently in a romantic rela-

tionship. Many of the points we make apply to

both types of programs, and our use of the term

relationship education is meant to serve as a

reminder of the relevance of these issues to both

types. We do not directly address youth, par-

enting, or fatherhood education or interventions,

although many points we make about best prac-

tices would be relevant in those areas as well.

In addition to the distinction between serving

couples (usually, partners together) or serving

individuals, there are a plethora of approaches

and uses of relationship education, as well as

motivations for those who receive such services.

Both the aims of providers and the interests of

consumers are reected in distinctions between

preventive education, relationship enhancement,

Family Relations 69 (July 2020): 497–519497

DOI:10.1111/fare.12419

498 Family Relations

and interventions for relationship distress. As we

will discuss, some participants attend with the

goal of enhancing or protecting the existing qual-

ity of their relationship and some attend with the

goal of getting help for relationship problems.

It will often be the case that similar methods

are used across the types of participant motiva-

tions and needs. Wewill come back to the impor-

tance of the motivations of participants. We rst

provide a review of the research on the effec-

tiveness of relationship education, wherein we

describe current issues and advances while set-

ting the stage for suggesting best practices (see

also Cowan & Cowan,2014; Markman, Halford,

& Hawkins, 2018; Markman & Rhoades, 2012;

Silliman, Stanley, Cofn, Markman, & Jordan,

2001).

E

There are several important questions in

understanding the effectiveness of any social

intervention. First, is the intervention generally

effective? Second, for whom is it most or least

effective? Third, if it is effective, what are

the mechanisms of effect? We consider each,

however, we do not intend to be comprehensive

because our primary focus is on best practices.

We review ndings that highlight both the

potential and the limitations of relationship

education. We focus on research published over

the past 20years, noting generally consistent

evidence of modest to moderate effects. The

existing literature includes studies of widely

varying rigor. Where a study was strongly capa-

ble of assessing for causal effects because of the

use of randomization, we use the term impact;

we otherwise use the terms effects or outcomes.

We also include a sampling of effect sizes, from

those that are small to those that are relatively

large.

Effectiveness of Relationship Education

There are numerous meta-analyses of studies

examining effectiveness of relationship educa-

tion (e.g., Arnold & Beelman, 2019; Carroll

& Doherty, 2003; Hawkins & Erickson, 2015;

Hawkins, Blanchard, Baldwin, & Fawcett,

2008; Fawcett, Hawkins, Blanchard, & Carroll,

2010). There has been evidence of effec-

tiveness on measures of relationship quality,

including communication and relationship sat-

isfaction(.30 <d<.36; Hawkins etal., 2008).

Several studies have shown positive effects on

relationship stability, including less breakup

and divorce (e.g., Moore, Avellar, Patnaik,

Covington, & Wu, 2018; Stanley etal., 2014).

Other studies have shown effects on parenting

behavior(.10 <d<.16;Adler-Baederet al.,

2013; Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, Pruett, & Wong,

2009; Moore et al., 2018). Additionally, there is

evidence that relationship education is associ-

ated with reduced likelihood of intimate partner

violence (IPV; e.g., Antle, Karam, Christensen,

Barbee, & Sar, 2011; Braithwaite & Fincham,

2014; Markman, Renick, Floyd, Stanley, &

Clements, 1993; Moore et al., 2018). This fact

was noted in a report from the U.S. Centers for

Disease Control and Prevention (Niolon etal.,

2017).

In the rest of this section as well as those

following it, we review specic studies that

have been relatively inuential in the eld at

this time. We start with a few of the large,

community-based randomized controlled trials

(RCTs; a number of them were briey cited

in the preceding paragraph, as we listed some

of the types of specic outcomes in the eld).

One such study examined the impacts of the

Prevention and Relationship Education Program

(PREP) as delivered by U.S. Army chaplains to

military couples. There was evidence of vari-

ous short-term impacts on relationship quality

(Allen, Stanley, Rhoades, Markman, & Loew,

2011) and a substantial reduction in divorce

2years after the intervention (Stanley etal.,

2014).

Other large RCTs have been commissioned

in the United States by the Administration

for Children and Families (ACF). Concerns

about the impact of a decline in family stabil-

ity on adults and children led the government

to invest in efforts to strengthen the relation-

ships of low-income families (Knox, Cowan,

Cowan, & Bildner, 2011). These efforts have

played an important role in recent advances in

the evidence base for relationship education,

including from both RCTs (noted subsequently)

and community-centered studies designed to

examine specic approaches (Carlson, Daire,

& Bai, 2014a; Quirk, Strokoff, & Owen, 2014;

Visvanathan, Richmond, Winder, & Koenck,

2014).

ACF has supported several large RCTs

with disadvantaged couples. In one long-term

study of relationship education with unmarried

couples expecting a child, the impacts were