Examining intervention hours attended for couples randomly assigned to receive relationship education.

Relationship education (RE) has shown promise as an effective intervention for couples. Yet, challenges exist with retaining low-income couples and federal funding required that grantees provide at least 12 h of core content. We conducted a follow-up analysis to a randomized trial of RE with low-income couples. We focused on couples randomly assigned to the treatment (N = 579) and examined the influence of intervention hours on emotion regulation, dyadic coping, and individual distress at 1 and 6-month follow-up. Results of longitudinal actor-partner interdependence models indicated that women who completed the program reported fewer difficulties in emotion regulation at 6-month follow-up than women who attended fewer intervention hours. Additionally, men who completed reported more individual distress at 1-month follow-up than men who attended fewer hours. Given that most couples were Hispanic, we conducted an exploratory analysis to examine language as a covariate with mixed results.

Examining the stability of emotional regulation and psychological distress for low-income individuals: A latent transition analysis.

Previous relationship education research has focused on investigating healthy relationships at the couple level, with limited research conducted on individual-oriented relationship education programs for economically disadvantaged individuals. More specifically, there is a lack of research on how individual-oriented relationship education programs contribute to changes in unique attributes of individuals who enroll in these programs and who would benefit most from relationship education programs. The primary aim of this study is to understand the stability of economically disadvantaged individuals' psychological distress and emotion regulation over two time points, comparing individuals randomly assigned to the relationship intervention using Prevention and Relationship Education's (PREP) Within My Reach (WMR) versus those assigned to a wait-list control. Using a sample of 1129 economically disadvantaged individuals enrolled in the study, results indicated that the three-class model for psychological distress and emotion regulation was the most appropriate for the latent transition analysis. Treatment group participants were more likely to transition to more adaptive models than their wait-list control counterparts, although a small percentage of participants did transition to a less adaptive model. Implications, future directions, and limitations are discussed.

Effects of individual-oriented relationship education for parents: A randomized controlled trial.

Individual-oriented relationship education aims to support healthy relationship development for singles, and provides flexibility for couples when only one member is available or willing to attend. While quasi-experimental studies have shown some benefits for those who attended relationship education individually, no randomized controlled trials have been conducted for individual-oriented RE. Moreover, it is not clear how relationship education benefits the co-parenting relationship when only one parent attends. Thus, this paper presents the results of a randomized controlled trial, with a wait-list control group, for a sub-sample of parents (N = 322) who participated in a 6-month trial of individual-oriented relationship education utilizing Prevention and Relationship Education Program's (PREP) Within My Reach (WMR) curriculum. Results indicated statistically significant, small, positive intervention effects on parent-child relationships 3 months after random assignment. However, no other treatment effects were detected for parents. We also found no statistically significant differences in the rate of change over the 6-month study period between treatment and wait-list control parents. There was a statistically significant effect for time, indicating that all enrolled parents in the study reported significant positive growth on emotion regulation, positive encouragement, parent-child relationships, and parental adjustment. We discuss implications for relationship education programming, as well as evaluating outcomes in future studies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).