Table of contents

• Preface
• Executive summary

1. Significance and Nature of strong marriage and couple relationships
2. The major determinants of strong couple relationships
3. Current knowledge about relationship education
4. Challenges and opportunities in making marriage and relationship
5. Specific research and development proposals
   • Project 1: Promoting empirically supported skills training approaches to relationship education.
   • Project 2: Development and preliminary evaluation of Flexible Delivery Relationship Education Program
   • Project 3: Enhancing access to relationship education by high risk and low referral couples
   • Project 4: Randomized controlled trials of the medium and long-term effects of best practice approaches to relationship education.
   • Summary and conclusions
6. Conclusion

• References
• Consultations and acknowledgements

Preface

This is a report on how to enhance the effectiveness of marriage and relationship education in strengthening marriage and relationships in Australia. The report includes two major sections. The first section is a review of the scientific evidence on the effects of marriage and relationship education. The second section is a series of action research proposals for extending the accessibility and effectiveness of marriage and relationship education. The proposals include several collaborative projects between service providers and researchers for the development and evaluation of innovative approaches to marriage and relationship education.

The Department of Family and Community Services appointed Professor Kim Halford of the School of Applied Psychology at Griffith University to undertake a consultation into research on marriage and relationship education in August 1999. The consultation brief was to conduct a major review of literature, and to consult with key stakeholders, in order to develop a series of action research proposals on marriage and relationship education. The required research proposals were to include action research that would lead to enhanced accessibility or effectiveness of marriage and relationship education. In addition, the consultation was to propose research that could be done to enhance knowledge about the medium and long-term effects of marriage and relationship education. This report on the consultation was to be delivered to the Department of Family and Community Services in October 1999.

In conducting the consultancy I undertook an extensive review of the available scientific research literature on the determinants of relationship satisfaction and stability, and the effectiveness of marriage and relationship education. In addition, I had a large number of consultations with stakeholders in the delivery of marriage and relationship education. These stakeholders included current providers of marriage and relationship education, through both religious and secular organisations, civil and religious marriage celebrants, representatives of different community and ethnic minority groups, researchers who look at marriage and family issues, senior public servants from the Department of Family and Community Services and the Attorney-General's Department, and social policy analysts. Due to the time constraints imposed on the conduct of the consultation, much of this work was done by telephone conference. I also made extensive use of e-mail consultations. In addition, I also had a series of face-toface individual and group meetings with many stakeholders.

I have found it a challenging and exciting opportunity to review the research and ideas of others on marriage and relationship education in close detail. The openness and generosity of educators and researchers in sharing their ideas and resources has been truly inspirational. I am most grateful to all those many people throughout Australia, and people from many other parts of the world, who sent me papers, met with me, sent me materials, and participated in telephone conferences. I have benefited greatly from the knowledge and experiences they shared, and hope I have reflected their wisdom in my report.

I am very grateful to that my employer Griffith University gave me special leave to conduct this project. In particular, my boss Pro-Vice-Chancellor Professor Max Standage, who recognized my passionate interest in the area of marriage and relationship education, and Acting Vice Chancellor Bill Lovegrove both supported me devoting my time to this project. My colleague Professor John O'Gorman was extremely supportive behind the scenes, and I am grateful to have him as a colleague. I also want to thank Dr. Sharon Dawe who stepped in as Acting Head of the School of Applied Psychology whilst I was undertaking this consultation. Knowing the school leadership was in good hands allowed me to concentrate on the tasks at hand.

I have a large set of acknowledgements at the end of this report. In addition, I want to extend a special thank you to Ms. Carmel Dyer, Ms. Susie Sweeper, Dr. Sue Osgarby, and Ms. Lisa Phillips who were research assistants on this project. Each of these people helped collate and summarize key aspects of the research reviewed. A very special thank you to Ms. Di Fisher, my personal assistant, who helped organize the many and varied tasks involved in getting the consultation done in eight weeks.

Finally, and most importantly, I want thank Barb, James and Chris who put up with frenetic bursts of activity from me to get this project done. Their love and support mean the world to me.

Kim Halford, PhD. MAPsS, Professor of Psychology, Griffith University.