Marriage Skills Education Reduces Divorce By 67%

By John Crouch, June 21, 2011

Marriage skills education cuts military divorce by 2/3 in blind test

Randomized study demonstrates divorce reduction of 2/3 for military couples receiving marriage education.

Unlike many studies of marriage education, and indeed of almost any other kind of education or counseling for any kind of social behavior, this study was able to have a control group that did not take the classes, AND to randomly assign couples between the control  group and the group that took marriage education, specifically "PREP for Strong Bonds" delivered by Army chaplains.

One year later, 2.03% of the marriage-educated group divorced and 6.20% of the control group divorced.

This is not the first study using randomly-assigned control groups - earlier studies have likewise found that what's most effective for couples is curricula which are professionally developed, but which are delivered within a particular group, whether religious, ethnic or occupational.

Link to the article: http://familylaw.typepad.com/stats/2011/06/marriage-skills-education-cuts-military-divorce-by-23-in-blind-test.html

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Here is the link for the published research paper.

http://www.divorcereform.info/images/stories/stanleystudy/Stanley.pdf

Abstract

Findings from a large, randomized controlled trial of couple education are presented in this brief report. Married Army couples were assigned to either PREP for Strong Bonds (n = 248) delivered by Army chaplains or to a no-treatment control group (n = 228). One year after the intervention, couples who received PREP for Strong Bonds had 1/3 the rate of divorce of the control group. Specifically, 6.20% of the control group divorced while 2.03% of the intervention group divorced.  These findings suggest that couple education can reduce the risk of divorce, at least in the short run with military couples