Education for relationships can potentially occur in many different ways and at many different times across the life cycle. In this chapter, the various forms of relationship education are discussed in order to provide some sense of the scope of the activities that are collectively known as 'relationship education'. The ways in which relationship education has been conceptualised in previous research is also briefly examined.
2.1 Informal approaches to learning about relationships
Informal relationship education has always been available through the family (Andrews, 1994). Children are exposed to ideas about marriage and relationships from a young age and often receive powerful messages about the nature of relationships, what is considered to be 'acceptable' within the context of intimate relationships and the many ways in which adults can choose to move into, live in and move out of relationships. As children grow and develop they are also exposed to a range of experiences that further add to their knowledge of relationships. Interactions with peers, families and the media are powerful influences, as are their experiences in forming their first relationships throughout their adolescence and early adulthood years. In the case of this informal relationship education, learning is largely experiential,
ad hoc, and reflects strongly held beliefs that relationships are 'private' and 'a natural thing to do' that are best learned 'on-the job' (Simons, Harris & Willis, 1994, p. 140).
2.2 Growth and development of formalised approaches to learning about relationships
Alongside this pervasive, informal learning about relationships afforded through life experience, people also learn about relationships and family life in a variety of formal settings. Schools make a significant contribution to learning for relationships and family life. Students are exposed to knowledge, skills and insights through various subject areas and, more covertly, through the ways in which gender, relationships and families are portrayed in textbooks and the day-to-day life of the school.
The most widespread and familiar institutionalised approaches to learn about marriage have been provided by marriage celebrants, especially those connected with some form of faith tradition (Simons
et al. 1994). Discussions between the couple and their celebrant prior to the wedding ceremony have long been used as an opportunity for celebrants to educate couples in relation to the key ideas about marriage within the context of the faith tradition in which they are marrying. Increasingly, inventories such as PREPARE (PRE marital Personal And Relationship Evaluation) and FOCCUS (Facilitating Open Couple Communication, Understanding and Study) have also become central components in this form of relationship education.
The development of programmatic approaches to the provision of relationship education in Australia dates back to the mid 1940s. At that time a number of Christian churches began to offer programs in response to a changing social context characterised by an awareness of the increasing fragility of family ties and the need to pass on information about 'how to be a good husband or wife' (Harris 1992, p. 11). Early pre-marriage education programs took the form of a series of lectures, spread over a number of sessions, covering a range of subject areas including family planning, financial issues, roles of husbands and wives, male and female physiology and psychology.
In the 1970s programs began to show a significant shift away from predominantly lecture-based formats to include more individual and couple work. This shift was in part due to the availability of funding from the federal government. This allowed greater diversity in the types of providers offering programs and also increased opportunities to employ staff with qualifications in areas such as adult education, social work, and psychology. These conditions, complemented by the growth of professional bodies for educators, provided rich sources of new ideas to inform practice.
The introduction of PREPARE and FOCCUS to Australia in the 1980s and 1990s respectively, provided viable research-based alternatives to group-based programs. Both PREPARE and FOCCUS can be used to assist couples gain insight about their attitudes, behaviours and expectations. These inventories are based on the premise that changes in thinking and behaviour, made by the individual and couple as a result of the experience of the inventory process, help to strengthen the relationship and prevent relationship breakdown.
The evolution of formalised approaches to relationship education has been influenced by the growing recognition that education focussing on one particular life stage (pre-marriage) was an inadequate response to the growing diversity of ways in which Australian families were choosing to live. Programs now reflect this diversity, with growth in programs over the past ten years having been particularly strong in areas
other than pre-marriage education. This has been fostered in part by increased funding for these types of programs and a by gradual opening of educators' experiences to influence from areas such as counselling and psychology. Programs addressing issues such as divorce, separation and step parenting in particular have become more widespread.
Program content and processes have also changed in response to outcomes from academic programs of research, which have developed and tested new programs and found new ways of explaining how relationships form and develop over the life course. The work of Howard Markman and his colleagues (1981, 1988, 1993, 1994), and John Gottman (1998, 1999) from the United States and Kim Halford and his colleagues in Australia (1999, 1997) has been most influential. The work of these scholars has alerted providers to the value of developing programs based on research on the determinants of healthy marriage and opened debates about the value and importance of skill based training to achieve this goal. Halford (1999) has also stimulated the debate about the efficacy of using information technology in the delivery of programs via educator-supported flexible learning packages.
In June 1998 the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs tabled
'To have and to hold: Strategies to strengthen marriage and relationships'. The report documented the dramatic changes in marriage and family that have taken place in Australia since the Second World War - the rise in the divorce rate (and the concomitant rise in step families and sole parent families), the rise in defacto relationships and cohabitation before marriage, and the general decline in marriage rates. In light of the evidence that relationship breakdown has such devastating consequences for individuals and wider society, the Committee recommended that programs focus on preventive education with a view to building healthy stable relationships. In particular, the Committee recommended that educative prevention programs focus on the three life transition events of marriage: pre-marriage (i.e. family of origin issues and conflict resolution); birth of the first child (on the basis that parenthood tends to be associated with mean decline in relationship satisfaction and increase in conflict); and separation and re partnering (due to the high rate of relationship breakdown in step families) (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, 1998).
This emphasis on prevention and early intervention and the provision of integrated approaches to the provision of services to families (where relationship education represents one key response) has found further reinforcement in federal government policies such as the
Partnerships against Domestic Violence and the
Stronger Families and Communities Strategy. The growing awareness of the key role that education can play in supporting efforts to prevent domestic and family violence has also promoted the growth of a significant number of programs addressing topics such as anger management and other forms of education programs for victims of family violence and their children, and to a lesser extent, for perpetrators of violence.
In summary, a range of social, political, financial and academic factors have shaped the growth and development of formalised approaches to relationship education. The provision of programs has grown from an almost exclusive focus on one life stage event (marriage) to embrace a wide range of relationship types, issues and life events. Over time, the slow opening up of the field of marriage education to the influence of other modalities of family service provision (in particular counselling) and the influence of research-based approaches to the development of programs have resulted in a growing diversity of programs and increasing debate as to the efficacy of the various ways in which people might formally be educated for relationships and family life. Making sense of this diversity of approaches is now one of the critical issues facing those concerned with making decisions about the expenditure of public funds on relationship education and promoting the provision of quality services to clients.
2.3 Conceptualising marriage and relationship education programs
As the field has grown in scope and complexity, there have been a number of research studies that have offered different approaches to the task of conceptualising marriage and relationship education programs into a coherent framework. Each framework developed through this work emphasises key characteristics of programs and could arguably provide a starting point for the development of approaches to evaluate like programs on the basis of a range of indicators including outcomes, cost effectiveness and so on.
Harris
et al. (1992) grouped programs by the type of provider (non-church-based, local church-based and centralised church-based). They also suggested that the content and structure of programs, rather than being classified into distinct groups, could be plotted along a continuum between two 'extreme' types. At one end were placed programs that were flexible in structure, format and content and designed to meet couple needs (activity curriculum). At the other end of the continuum were placed programs that had a pre-set structure, format and content, tailored to meet the needs of providers (topic curriculum).
Some years later the Keys Young report (1997) suggested that programs could be conceptualised across three broad categories derived from the public health literature. These categories were:
- primary prevention (targeting all couples);
- secondary intervention (targeting couples at high risk of marital interventions); and
- tertiary intervention (targeting couples with existing problems).
This conceptualisation was rejected by the House of Representative Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, which suggested that this framework was not in keeping with Australian experiences of service provision where universal provision, particularly for pre-marriage education, is favoured. The Committee also rejected the notion that services should only be targeted at couples deemed to be in need of services as a result of some identified deficits (House of Representative Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, 1998, p. 153).
In undertaking its examination of the provision of marriage and relationship education in a survey conducted specifically for their enquiry, the Committee grouped programs according to a number of categories (Table 2.1). This categorisation reflects the Committee's preference for universal services to support marriages and couples in committed relationships as a key to ameliorating some of the short and long term effects of marriage and relationship breakdown.
Table 2.1 Classification of Marriage and Relationship Education Programs (House of Representative Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, 1998)
| KEY DIMENSION |
COMPONENTS |
| Program type |
- pre-marriage education
- pre-marriage inventories
- post-wedding course
- re-marriage course
- step family course
- separation course
- miscellaneous relationship courses
- other relationship course
|
| Provider affiliation |
- Catholic
- Anglican
- Secular
- Other Christian
|
In response to the Committee's report, the Commonwealth Government launched the National Families Strategy in June 1999. Part of the strategy involved the promotion of research into the effectiveness of marriage and relationship education (Andrews, 2000 p.30). To this end, the Department of Family and Community Services commissioned Professor Kim Halford to report on ways to enhance the effectiveness and accessibility of marriage and relationship education in Australia. In his report,
Australian Couples in Millennium Three: A Research and Development Agenda for Marriage and Relationship Education, Halford (1999) discusses a number of ways in which marriage and relationship education programs might be conceptualised, suggesting that the diversity of programs might be understood across a number of dimensions:
- the degree of specificity and documentation of approaches including the extent to which programs are based on psychological research or educators' experiences and responses to feedback from course participants;
- mode of delivery (face-to-face or flexible means, for example distance education approaches which combine written and visual materials with telephone contact with and educators);
- intensity of the program as measured by the number of hours and variations in format (for example, consecutive sessions spread over a number of weeks, weekend courses); and
- educational goals (information / awareness raising, inventory assessment and feedback and skills training) (Halford, 1999 pp.45 - 51).
This categorisation offered a more generic approach to conceptualising relationship education programs but was subject to strong debate for the distinctions it made in relation to educational goals. These debates were founded on emerging research evidence that has questioned the contribution of skills to the development and maintenance of healthy marriages and relationships over time (see, for example Gottman, 1998) and the experience of educators that suggested that courses often addressed multiple education goals (for example information / awareness raising and skills training) in response to the identified needs of the clients. Further, educators also pointed out that the term 'skills training' could be understood in a number of ways (for example, skills training could include a number of steps including explanations, demonstration, practice, coaching, experimenting in alternative contexts and feedback) and the exact nature of these processes was a central issue in determining the extent to which a program could be classified as 'skills training'.
In September 1999 the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Catholic University conducted a round table discussion of pre-marriage education with relationship professionals from across Australia. The proceedings of the round table are reported in a briefing paper entitled
A framework for future research in pre marriage education (Parker, 1999). This paper identified the huge variation in the programs, educators and participants and the issues this creates when attempting to make comparisons between programs. The paper then offers a conceptualisation of ways in which programs might vary:
- Structure
Some programs have extensive documentation about their procedures and there is a well-developed training system for people who provide these program structures. Other practitioners have developed the programs themselves and so the procedures may not be as well documented, but rather depend on the experiences of the educator. Programs may be also be designed to be implemented in a flexible manner so that the content of a particular course is driven by the participant's needs in preference to following a set curriculum.
- Content
The four most common content areas are communication, sexuality, conflict resolution, and family of origin. Others include finance, expectations and change and growth. Participant feedback rather than research or theoretical orientation may inform the program content.
- Mode of delivery
Programs may be delivered to groups, individual couples or individual partners. They may be face-to-face or self-directed (videotape, guide book and telephone education or via the internet) and they may consist of a single session of one to two hours, multiple sessions over a number of weeks, or an intensive program run over a weekend.
- Educational goals
Programs may incorporate, to varying degrees, components of the following three areas:
- Information and awareness
The majority of programs offered in Australia are purported to be of this type. They are based on adult learning models that focus on experiential learning. These programs typically involve couples in an exploration of their awareness of expectations of marriage, family of origin differences, communication patterns, conflict resolution strategies, and the changing pattern of the life cycle. They may also include information sessions about financial issues, home buying, sexuality, and family planning (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs 1998, p. 130).
- Assessment and feedback via standardised inventories
Inventories have been developed from psychological research on the predictors of relationship satisfaction. With this approach couples complete an inventory and participate in follow-up sessions with a facilitator / educator.
- Skills training
With this approach couples are taught specific strategies for improving relationship functioning. While this is the least used method, research indicates that skills training a) improves couple's communication; b) improves conflict management; c) enhances relationship satisfaction; d) may decrease risk of divorce across the first four or five years of marriage and e) effects are attenuated over a five to ten year period.
Parker indicates that a model developed by Harris
et al. (1992) to distinguish programs on the basis of structural flexibility could be developed further to incorporate other relevant dimensions such as those reviewed above.
In summary, there have been a number of attempts to provide an organising framework to facilitate understanding of the diverse range of programs offered under the banner of 'marriage and relationship education'. Researchers to date have suggested a number of categories that could be used in studies to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. The huge variation in relationship education programs and the lack of detailed information about them is a severe impediment to those wishing to undertake rigorous evaluation of programs.
2.4 The importance of evaluation
In a climate where there is an expectation that service providers should be able to objectively and scientifically 'prove' the outcomes of their programs, objective, experimental designs (sometimes also referred to as randomised control trials) are considered to be the 'gold standard' in evaluation practice (Halford, 2000; Tomison, 2000). There are, however a range of factors which makes such types of evaluation problematic for service providers operating 'in the real world', including:
- fear that evaluations might show that some programs have negative effects or are less successful than others; thus questioning the continued viability of these programs in the resource starved, competitive funding environment in which most service providers operate;
- the reality that rigorous evaluation processes can remove precious funds from service provision;
- a lack of expertise and resources within service providers to conduct complex, empirical evaluations;
- the need for detailed planning and implementation prior to undertaking a random control trial and the issues that this raises in a competitive funding environment;
- the reality that clients presenting for services may have complex sets of needs which are not readily amenable to single focus interventions – thus making the design of evaluation processes complex and difficult; and
- the serious ethical issues that may confront service providers when required to withhold services from clients in order to maintain control groups that are needed if the effects of programs are to be measured over time. In reality there are considerable tensions between scientific rigor and maintaining a client centred focus in service provision (Tomison, 2000).
Tomison (2000) also notes that, aside from the practical consideration of service providers, the efficacy of randomised control trials have also been critiqued on a range of issues including:
- the difficulties in separating out which elements of a program have led to 'success';
- difficulties in operationalising objectives and measures;
- the impact of environmental influences on the phenomena under study; and
- difficulties in replicating studies (Tomison, 2000 pp. 8 – 9).
Tomison concedes that
…while there may always be a place for empirical 'flagship' evaluations with a broad outcome focus that may 'prove' a program's effectiveness, there has been some recognition that experimental rigour in isolation is often an unsuitable means of evaluating social programs. This has become more apparent as service providers have adopted complex, multifaceted, ecological approaches to addressing or preventing what are complex social issues (Tomison, 2000, p. 10)
and agrees with other authors that clear documentation of programs is a critical starting point for any evaluation process. This documentation needs to include,
inter alia, a clear description of the program, stages of implementation, and a statement of measurable objectives for the program. The work undertaken in this study to develop a typology of relationship education programs has been conducted as a necessary first step in the quest to develop sound, practical and authentic approaches to evaluating relationship education services in community-based settings.
This chapter has canvassed the development and growth of relationship education services over time and some of the ways in which this diverse field of work has been conceptualised. The importance of developing a coherent framework for categorising services as a necessary precursor to the task of evaluating their effectiveness has also been underscored. The next chapter takes up the challenge of adding to this existing body of work by examining the way in which the researchers approached to task of collecting data for the development of a typology for relationship education services.