Research on many aspects of family dynamics, couple relationships, and marital satisfaction has fueled the creation of many healthy marriage programs. Below is information about recent, national-level research and evaluations.

NHMRC Sponsored Research

  • What Twenty-Somethings Think About Marriage, provides further evidence that most young people aspire to marry, regardless of current relationship or level of commitment, and that expectations for marriage success are remarkably high. TwoOfUs.org builds on this research. It is designed to get people talking about the complexity of healthy marriages and provide tools, resources, and tips for making relationships work.
  • What Works in Marriage and Relationship Education? This Report reviews and synthesizes the lessons emerging from evaluation research and practitioner experience to address two related questions: (a) What have we learned about the design and implementation of government-sponsored MRE programs? and (b) What do we know about the effects of these programs on participants, especially low-income populations?
     

Program Evaluation

business-woman-chart.jpg Reports of the most rigorously designed marriage and relationship education programs, including recent randomized controlled trials. Random assignment studies, or randomized control trials, are the gold standard in program evaluation. A well-implemented, random assignment study can say whether marriage education actually changed something about the people who participated in it.

Recent Random Assignment Studies:

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National Marriage and Divorce Statistics

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Research and Data Resources

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