The impacts of a high school healthy marriage and relationship education program

Abstract

AbstractObjectiveTo assess the 1‐year impacts of a healthy marriage and relationship education (HMRE) program for high school students.BackgroundResearch on HMRE programming for youth has found that programs can improve youth's relationship skills, attitudes, and knowledge around the time the program ends. However, there is less evidence on whether these impacts are sustained over time or when providers do not have enough time to deliver the full program.MethodA three‐arm cluster randomized trial involving 1,862 students from two schools. The two intervention groups received either a 12‐lesson HMRE curriculum or a shortened eight‐lesson version of the same curriculum. Students completed surveys at baseline and 1 year later.ResultsStudents in all three groups reported similar levels of relationship skills, attitudes, and knowledge for 9 of the 10 outcomes examined at the one‐year follow up. For the one exception, students offered the 12‐lesson curriculum were more likely than students in the control group to disagree that feelings of love are enough to sustain a happy marriage.ConclusionWe found limited evidence of sustained impacts and no evidence of an effect from shortening the curriculum.ImplicationsOffering HMRE to high school students might plant the seeds of healthy relationships, but more programming will probably be needed to sustain the types of short‐term impacts found in prior research.