“My Incentive is THIS Relationship!”: Incentivizing Relationship Wellness Programs to Attract Sexual and Gender Minority Couples

Adapting the Marriage Checkup for Gender, Romantic, and Sexual Minority Relationships: Responses From 18 LGBTQ Partners Completing a Pilot Program

“…The pilot study used single-subject non-concurrent, multiple probe (Gast et al, 2014), multiple baseline (Barlow et al, 2009) design exploring the effectiveness of the MC with the subsets of GRSM relationships. Results on the MC's effectiveness with these GRSM partners, reported in previous articles, indicated overall that the MC had a moderate effect size in this pilot program (Minten & Dykeman, 2019, 2020a, 2020bMinten, & Muzacz, 2022).…”

“…Partners completed baseline relationship satisfaction questions, MC surveys, and two in-person sessions with the therapist for the checkup program. They completed post-intervention surveys as part of the single-subject design, and they had a 6-month survey that included questions on incentives (Minten, & Muzacz, 2022) and changes to further improve the MC for GRSM relationships. To both show appreciation and increase appeal, the study incorporated a $50 honorarium for completing the program with an additional $10 for the completion of the 6-month follow-up survey.…”

“…The MC may provide benefits that complement relationship education (more privacy, more attention to the unique relationship and partners and their perspectives from the basis in MI, etc.). The MC improves relationship satisfaction for GRSM partners with only a few simple small adjustments to reduce heterosexist and cisgender bias (Minten & Dykeman, 2019, 2020a, 2020bMinten, & Muzacz, 2022), and additional changes to content (survey questions) and process (attending to topics relevant to GRSM relationships specifically) may improve the intervention in a way that parallels the research on adapting relationship education programs for GRSM relationships.…”

“…Six self-identified lesbian partners, six selfidentified gay male partners, and six self-identified transgender partners (note: transgender was defined for this study as a relationship where one or more partners self-identify as transgender or gender diverse) responded to a 6-month follow-up survey sharing their feedback on how they thought the MC could be adapted to better support them. The outcome results of the MC program itself on relationship satisfaction for these 18 partners are reported and discussed elsewhere (Minten & Dykeman, 2019, 2020a, 2020bMinten, & Muzacz, 2022). This article covers the partners' responses to the survey questions (1) how they would describe the helpfulness of the checkup (asked on a Likert scale and with an open-ended question) and ( 2) what would they like added to the checkup for their relationship (from a multiple choice list from previous research with sexual and gender minority partners and an open question).…”