Moderating role of socioecological factors on web-based relationship interventions for lower income couples.

Abstract

Low-income couples tend to face more external stressors and report less stable romantic relationships compared to higher income couples. A recent nationwide randomized controlled trial of the web-based OurRelationship and ePREP programs was conducted with a sample of 742 lower income couples within 200% of the federal poverty line to help improve relationship distress (Doss et al., 2020). Using a socioecological framework, the current study examined whether the presence of intrapersonal-level, couple-level, and community-level factors moderated those couples' gains in relationship satisfaction during the intervention period as well as maintenance of those gains over 4-month follow-up relative to waitlist-control. Using multilevel modeling, results revealed that both interventions were effective in serving lower income couples relative to couples in the waitlist control group with minimal evidence of moderation by individual-level, couple-level, or neighborhood factors. Thus, the interventions are effective in reducing relationship distress across many socioecological factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).