The Effectiveness of Communication Skills Training on Marital Conflicts and its Different Aspects in Women

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of communication skills training on marital conflicts and its aspects in married women who referred to health centers of Gonabad in 2013. At this experimental study with pretest-posttest design and control group, Sixty married women, who have referred to health centers of Gonabad city, had been randomly selected and distributed in two groups as case and control. First, the pretest was administered for both groups. The pretest was consisted of a questionnaire on demographic information, communication skills and marital conflicts. Then the case group was presented with ten 45-minute sessions on communication skills. At the end of trainings, which lasted for 2 weeks, both groups filled the questionnaires. The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 and independent and paired T-tests. The results showed In comparison to control group, communication skills training significantly reduces marital conflicts in case group (P=0.001). These trainings had also significantly influenced the five aspects of marital conflicts of case group including cooperation (P=0.048), sexual relationship (P=0.001), emotional reactions (P=0.019), personal communication with relatives (P=0.033) and familial communication with spouse relatives and friends (P=0.20), but did not influence the other 2 aspects which are children support (P=0.13) and financial issues (P=0.12). Regarding the impact of communication skills training on marital conflicts, it is recommended to train the women with marital conflicts with communication skills.