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

Abstract

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.

Factor structure and dyadic measurement invariance of the English version of the dyadic coping inventory measuring low-income couples in the United States

“…Given the limitation of previous studies, the current study examined the internal structure of the DCI with the responses from couples rather than individuals as the unit of analysis. As researchers used the DCI as a primary outcome for intervention studies (relationship education) that included couples with low income (Carlson et al, 2023;Falconier et al, 2022), additional research is necessary to re-examine the factor structure of the DCI when it is used to measure the stress coping strategies of low-income couples in the U.S.…”