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Increasing relationship quality and satisfaction among couples through delivering relationship education has been a topic of interest for decades, with the 1980s marking the initiation of a dramatic expansion of research in this area. The 1980s also saw the beginning of what was to become a continuing decline in marital quality and satisfaction among first-time married couples (Amato, Johnson, Booth, & Rogers, 2003; Schramm & Harris, 2010). This interest in dyadic couple relationship quality was likely driven by the expanding awareness that quality of marital relationships influences a broad range of positive and negative outcomes; healthy, satisfying marriages provide numerous benefits important to individuals and society, while marital dissolution has a profoundly negative effect (Amato, 2010; Cowan & Cowan, 2005; Harris, Schramm, Marshall, & Lee, 2012; Schramm & Harris, 2010). Furthermore, subjective levels of marital quality and satisfaction are predictive of both marital stability and marital dissolution (Gottman, 1994; Gottman & Notarius, 2000). Couple and relationship education (CRE) interventions have shown mixed results across experimental studies. Moderate effect size improvements have been found across CRE intervention studies in the specific areas of relationship quality and communication skills (Hawkins, Blanchard, Baldwin, & Fawcett, 2008). But how does the delivery of relationship programming impact the relationship quality, communication skills, and well-being of those who actually deliver the programming interventions? The purpose of this study was to assess associations between relationship quality and satisfaction, intimate partner consensus, and relevant contextual factors among those who deliver relationship education programming in Florida through the SMART Couples Project, a federally funded healthy marriages and relationships grant. Initial mixed methods results indicate that “teaching a person to fish” through delivering relationship education programming generally has a positive impact on relationship quality, communication skills, and well-being among those who deliver the programming. Specific implications for impact of relationship education delivery on those who deliver the intervention are proposed.

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The transition from partnership to parenthood can be a time of excitement and rapid change for couples. After the birth of a first child, many couples also experience declines in relationship satisfaction leading to increased risk of relationship dissolution, postpartum depression, and negative child outcomes. Considering the frequency of this transition and the connection between parent relationship quality and health, it is surprising that relatively few intervention programs have focused on preparing couples for this life transition. Hence, I have developed a four week relationship enhancement intervention entitled the Mindful Transition to Parenting Program. This program is based on interpersonal neurobiology, which states that mindfulness training can change brain structures that can lead to increased attunement abilities and sustained improvements in relationship quality. The program focuses on improving mindfulness, empathy, emotionality, and relationship satisfaction for couples expecting their first child. In this research study, I determined the outcomes for couples who participate in this program through mixed methods research with a randomized experimental design. Thirty-three couples were randomly assigned by a coin-toss to either a waitlist control group, or the Mindful Transition to Parenting Program treatment group. Results demonstrated that men in the treatment group significantly improved in relationship satisfaction, negative affect, and mindfulness when compared to the control group. Women had no significant treatment effects, though treatment group women had small effect size improvement in three measures of empathy. The emergent qualitative themes for participants in the program included: (1) positive changes for self, (2) improvements in couple relationship, (3) feeling more prepared for baby, and (4) male involvement. Mixed methods analyses revealed that men in particular benefited from the social support, increased connection with their babies, and more identification with the role of father that the program provided. These are promising results, showing that a brief intervention including mindfulness and skill-based learning can have positive effects on couples in the transition to parenthood. I conclude by discussing clinical implications and future research directions. / Ph. D.

Mindfulness research has historically focused on individual benefits (e.g., Brown & Ryan, 2003), yet more recently also has considered relational outcomes influenced by mindfulness, such as romantic relationship quality (e.g., McGill, Adler-Baeder, & Rodriguez, 2015) and parent-child relationship quality (e.g., Coatsworth et al., 2016). Overall, mindfulness research has assessed global measures of mindfulness and does not consider the distinct elements of mindfulness and their relationship with various outcomes. Based on the assumption that there are multiple components of mindfulness, Baer and colleagues (2006) delineated and validated a measure of five facets of mindfulness. With a growing trend of incorporating mindfulness into prevention programs for parents (Cohen & Semple, 2010), it is valuable to examine the relationship between parenting outcomes and facets of mindfulness. Specifically, our research questions are: Are facets of mindfulness related at baseline to parenting efficacy and do some facets of mindfulness have a stronger association with parenting efficacy than others? Does initial change in mindfulness dimensions (after exposure to relationship education) result in subsequent change in parenting efficacy? Does the age of the child(ren) affect these relationships? Parents (n=578 parents—308 mothers, 270 fathers) were recruited as part of a larger randomized control trial (RCT) examining the program effectiveness of couple relationship education programs. Measures utilized include the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale (Gibaud-Wallston & Wandersmann, 1978) and three subscales—nonreactivity to inner experience, acting with awareness, and nonjudging of inner experience—from the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006). Analyses utilized three waves of data—baseline, 6-week and 6-month follow-up. We utilized linear regression to test for a relationship at baseline between the three facets of mindfulness and parenting efficacy for both mothers and fathers, separately. Level of parenting efficacy was predicted by nonreactivity to inner experiences for mothers (β=.184, p=.001) and fathers (β=.126, p=.03) and by acting with awareness for mothers (β=.192, p=.004) and fathers (β=.179, p=.009), accounting for other variables in the model. Nonjudging of inner experience marginally predicted level of parenting efficacy for fathers (β=.127, p=.058), but not for mothers (β=.053, p=.421), considering all other variables in the model. Path models were conducted using only the program participant group (n=370 parents). We tested with mothers and fathers separately whether initial change in three facets of mindfulness predicted change in parenting efficacy six months after couples relationship education intervention. Positive change in nonreactivity to inner experience for fathers after intervention was significantly (β=.150, p=.041) associated with positive change in parenting efficacy six months later. Our cross-sectional findings suggest that the facets of mindfulness are not equally predictive of parenting efficacy. The findings from our path models suggest that enhanced nonreactivity to inner experience promotes greater parenting efficacy six months after receiving relationship education for fathers. This is an important first step to discovering what aspects of mindfulness may be particularly important for educators to emphasize when teaching mindfulness to parents. Final analyses presented in March will test if the age of the child(ren) affects these findings.

Hold Me Tight: Conversations for Connection is a relationship education program based on Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT; Johnson 2004), an empirically supported model of couple therapy with roots in attachment theory. Currently, relationship education is mostly provided through skills-based programs with a focus on teaching communication, problem-solving and conflict resolution skills from the social-learning perspective. The HMT program is different; it targets attachment and emotional connection – aspects central to relationship functioning as identified in the literature. The present study is the first outcome study of the HMT program. The purpose of the study was to examine the trajectory of change for relationship satisfaction, trust, attachment, intimacy, depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms. Couples who participated in this study were from several cities across Canada and the United States. The trajectory for the outcome variables were modeled across baseline, pre-program, post-program and follow-up in a sample of 95 couples participating in 16 HMT program groups. Results of a four-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM: Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) analysis demonstrated a significant cubic growth pattern for relationship satisfaction, trust, attachment avoidance, depressive and anxiety symptoms demonstrating no change from baseline to pre-program and improvements from pre-program to post-program. Scores returned to pre-program levels at follow-up. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that the changes from pre- to post-program were significant with a large effect size. We also looked at couples’ reported ability to engage in the conversations from the program and found that mean scores declined from post-program to follow-up. The results of this initial pilot study suggest that the HMT program is a promising alternative to existing relationship education programs with results comparable to skills-based relationship education programs. The decrease in scores from post-program to follow-up suggests that booster sessions following the completion of the program could be necessary to help couples maintain gains. Limitations and areas for further study are discussed.

Couple relationships directly affect parenting practices, which in turn affect outcomes for children. More so, at-risk couples are more prone to exhibit conflictual relationships, elevated parenting stress, and behaviors that increase their children’s vulnerability to negative physical, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Couples relationship education (CRE) programs have been found to positively influence couple functioning, which in turn has been linked to improved parenting behaviors. Supported by a federal grant, Project F.R.E.E.(www.ugaprojectfree.com) provides CRE to at-risk parents engaged in child welfare services in order to improve couple and co-parenting functioning. This presentation will share results from a study examining changes among a sample of married and unmarried couples in self-reports of coparenting quality, parenting stress and parenting behaviors. Variations in change based on parents’ gender, marital status, and developmental timing of program delivery will be explored.

This study was conducted to determine if the information from the Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge (PICK) program How to Avoid Falling for a Jerk/ette helped positively change adolescents’ attitudes about relationships. The program was taught to 9,130 high school students (ages 14 -18) from 35 different high schools in a Western state. Surveys were given at the beginning of the first class (pretest) and at the end of the final class (posttest). In addition to demographic information, students rated (1) their attitudes about what it takes to get to know a potential partner, (2) their belief that love alone is enough to sustain a relationship, (3) statements endorsing controlling relationship attitudes, and (4) how to pace a relationship in healthy ways. Pretest and posttest score averages were calculated, then compared statistically to determine if teen attitudes had changed in light of the information they learned in the class. Results showed significant change in all four measures, suggesting that the information taught in the class was associated with positively influencing participants’ relationship attitudes.

This paper explores an emerging construct: relationship hope. I define relationship hope as when individuals feel that regardless of the current quality of the relationship, there is significant hope for the relationship in the future if they keep working on it. The Relationship Hope Scale (RHS) is a new five-item scale that measures this construct. I evaluated the psychometric properties of RHS with Classical Test Theory (CTT) and Item Response Theory (IRT). I used a nationally representative sample of married individuals, ages 25-50 years old, in the United States. I found that RHS performs well in both CTT and IRT analyses, that we can assume measurement invariance between genders and first and second (or more) marriages, and that the mean levels of relationship hope do not differ by demographic variables like education, race, and income level. I also found that the RHS discriminates well between individuals that have thought about divorce a few times, several times, a lot of times, or not at all. These findings on relationship hope have valuable implications for relationship education, therapy, and future research because relationship hope measures a concept of change and potentiality.

Sex education in Britain is poorly practised, in schools as well as in the home. British so called ‘Puritanism’ has been seen as one of the reasons. At a time and age when teenage pregnancy, Sexual Transmitted Infections (STIs) and viruses (AIDS/HIV) are on the increase more attention to the education of sexual behaviour is needed. Government initiatives are leading in that direction for schools as well as families, but it is unclear how these are materialised. Especially, how families discuss sexual matters is underresearched and poorly understood. Therefore, the aims of this study were to explore the potential facilitators and barriers of the communication of sexual topics, with and without the use of a Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) multimedia program, and to explore the impact of this program on the knowledge of sexual issues and concerns. A mixed-method design was employed by using Strauss and Corbin’s (1998) modified grounded theory to develop a model reflecting the findings. Knowledge was assessed on data gathered from twenty British families over a ten-month period. Using semi-structured interviews, observational field notes and quantitative measures, it was found that trust, respect, spending (leisure) time together and children’s perception of their parents’ sexual knowledge were facilitators for sexual communications. Older siblings and other family members who were regarded as role models also facilitated the discussion of sexual matters. The barriers for discussing sexual issues openly within families included authoritative parenting, lack of parental sexual knowledge, presence of younger siblings and parents’ direct questioning of children’s personal relationships. In light of this, the multimedia program could be beneficial in many more families when initiating and communicating sexual matters.