Long Term Effects of Premarital Intervention

描述(由申请人提供)：我们寻求继续进行一项社区一级婚前干预的长期有效性试验，旨在改善夫妇和家庭的福祉。这种延续将检验这种干预措施在家庭发展中期的有效性。我们为宗教组织(ROS)的夫妇传播了一项基于研究的预防和教育计划，因为ROS是为夫妇提供婚前教育计划的社区组织。该计划(预防和加强关系计划(PREP)旨在针对与个人和家庭功能问题有关的婚姻困境的风险和保护因素。在之前的资助期间，丹佛大都市区的RO被随机分配到三组：1)自然发生的婚前服务，2)由神职人员(他们接受过准备培训)在他们自己的RO中提供准备，以及3)在大学环境中提供准备。我们跟踪了从婚前到平均结婚13年的夫妇样本，并跟踪了这些ROS和他们对预防计划的使用15年。拟议的延续将允许我们通过平均18年的婚姻/20年的培训后继续跟踪我们的样本。此外，现在我们的大多数夫妇都有孩子，我们建议增加儿童和家庭评估，使用自我和父母-儿童及其家庭的功能报告，最重要的是，实地观察儿童与父母互动的衡量标准。因此，继续开展这一项目对于随着时间推移对干预效果进行前瞻性评估，特别是对离婚等随时间积累的结果进行前瞻性评估，并将这一创新扩展到儿童和家庭评估，具有重要意义。我们继续的具体目标是：1)评估基于研究的预防计划对夫妇离婚、随时间推移的婚姻质量(例如承诺、沟通)和成人功能的长期预防效果；2)使用自我报告和观察法评估儿童预防计划的长期预防效果；3)建立知识，为未来的预防工作提供参考。据我们所知，我们拥有的唯一数据集具有强大的沟通衡量标准，包括婚前和婚后(在许多时间点)的观察性和自我报告衡量标准，以及对其他重要概念的丰富的自我报告衡量标准，如关系调整、信心、承诺和积极联系(例如，支持、乐趣、友谊)以及儿童和成人个人功能的衡量标准。这个 建议的延续具有重要意义，因为它可以促进关于关系教育的长期影响以及随着时间的推移对婚姻、离婚和子女结果的过程的科学知识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We seek a continuation of a long-term effectiveness trial of a community-level intervention delivered before marriage and designed to improve the well-being of couples and families. The continuation would test the effectiveness of this intervention during the middle years of family development. We disseminated a research-based prevention and education program for couples in religious organizations (ROs) because ROs are the community organizations that offer premarital education programs for couples. The program (the Prevention and Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP) is designed to target risk and protective factors for marital distress that are associated with problems in individual an family functioning. In prior funding periods, ROs in the Denver metropolitan area were randomly assigned to three groups: 1) Naturally occurring premarital services, 2) PREP delivered by clergy (who were trained in PREP) in their own ROs, and 3) PREP delivered in a university setting. We have followed the resulting sample of couples from before marriage to an average of 13 years of marriage and have followed these ROs and their use of the prevention program for 15 years. The proposed continuation would allow us to continue following our samples through an average of 18 years of marriage/20 years post-training. Moreover, now that the majority of our couples have children, we propose adding child and family assessment using both self- and parent-report of children's functioning and that of their family, and, most importantly to the field, observational measures of children's interaction with their parents. Thus a continuation of this project is important for the prospective evaluation of intervention effects over time, especially for outcomes that accrue over time, such as divorce, and to provide this innovative extension into child and family assessment. Our specific aims for the continuation are: 1) Evaluate the long-term preventive effects of a research-based prevention program for couples on divorce, marital quality over time (e.g., commitment, communication), and on adult functioning, 2) Evaluate the long-term preventive effects of the prevention program for children using self-report and observational methods, and 3) Build knowledge that will inform future prevention efforts. We have the only data set that we know of that has robust measures of communication, assessed by both observational and self-report measures, before marriage and over time (at many time points) along with rich self-report measurement of other important constructs such as relationship adjustment, confidence, commitment, and positive connections (e.g., support, fun, friendship) as well as measures of child and adult individual functioning. The proposed continuation is significant in the ways that it can advance scientific knowledge on the long-term effects of relationship education as well as on processes of marriage, divorce, and child outcomes over time.