The purpose of this study was to analyze the attitudes and practices of Southern Baptist pastors in four Midwestern states toward premarital education. The researcher utilized a multi-stage sampling procedure to randomly select 1070 churches in Missouri, Tennessee, Illinois, and Kentucky. A research tool was created to record demographic information about the research participants and also to record the attitudes and practices of the sample toward premarital education. A content analysis was conducted which identified the top 11 recommendations from the literature base for premarital education curricular content areas. The curricular content components reportedly present in the practices of the sample were compared against the curricular content areas in the literature base. Finally, the researcher investigated the relationship between the presence of certain curricular content components of present in the practices of the sample and certain demographic characteristics of the sample.

Previous research has documented the effects of divorce on children, families, communities, taxpayers, and society. Accordingly, local, state, and national governments have enacted policies aimed at strengthening marriages and reducing divorce. Currently, ten states have enacted some form of premarital education promotion policy. However, no research has documented whether the implementation of premarital education promotion policies has actually decreased the divorce rate in implementing states. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to investigate empirically the effectiveness of premarital education policy implementation on reducing early divorce rates. Prior to running any empirical analyses, an implementation study was conducted to understand how effectively each state implemented the premarital education promotion policy. A combination of methods was used for this study including reviewing the legislative documents, reviewing archival records, as well as interviewing academics and key persons associated with the bill. Following the implementation study, an impact study was conducted to analyze the effects of the policies on the divorce rates. Divorce rate data were obtained from NCHS National Vital Statistics Reports (1988-2016). To assess the effects of premarital education policies, difference-in-difference estimation using state fixed effects was employed. The results of the implementation study suggest that while the policies had similarities in their language and intent, the majority of the states had little or no formal oversight and implementation of the policy. Results of the impact study suggest that effectively implementing a policy is significantly associated with a .5% in the divorce rate after controlling for all other variables in the model. I conclude with a discussion of the implementation and impact studies results as well as suggestions for future policy efforts and research

This thesis examined the influence that premarital preparation had on the level of complaints in marriages and the amount of perceptual accuracy that couples had in their marriage. The data for this thesis were taken from Wave I and Wave II of the Utah Governor’s Commission on Marriage study on newlyweds. The research examined four questions: (1) Do husbands and wives who have reported higher helpfulness of premarital preparation activities have fewer strong complaints in their marriage? (2) Do husbands and wives who have reported the helpfulness of premarital preparation activities have greater perceptual accuracy in their marriages? (3) Which types of premarital preparation activities are associated with strong complaints? (4) Which types of premarital preparation activities do husbands and wives find to be most helpful? Results revealed that those who reported the helpfulness of premarital preparation activities had fewer complaints than those who did not find those activities helpful. This study finds no statistical significance between the reported helpfulness of premarital preparation activities and perceptual accuracy. The relationship between premarital preparation activities and strong complaints is presented. Preparation activities that husbands and wives found to be most helpful are ranked and presented. A discussion of the findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research is also presented.

Little is known about the role that personality and emotional readiness factors may play in participation and outcomes of premarital education programs in varying formats. Data collected via the RELATionship Evaluation Questionnaire (RELATE: Busby et al., 2001) was used to analyze how personality and emotional readiness factors affect perceived change and helpfulness in self-directed and workshop formats of premarital education for 384 individuals who participated in such interventions. Depression was significantly and negatively related to participant perception of positive change and helpfulness in a workshop setting. Kindness was positively and significantly related to perceived positive change in both workshop and self-directed formats, and income was negatively and significantly related to perceived positive change in workshop settings. Anxiety was significantly and positively related to perceived helpfulness in workshop settings. Implications of these findings are discussed. More research is needed to compare these results to other formats of premarital interventions, such as classes and counseling formats, and to more diverse population samples.