The Bottom-line at the Top: Relationship distress carries significant personal, economic, and societal consequences from relationship instability to decreased workplace productivity to rising healthcare expenses. While couple therapy is effective at improving relationships, its high financial cost limits widespread accessibility, especially for lower income couples. This important study conducted a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of the online "OurRelationship" program to evaluate its financial return on investment. The primary analysis revealed an average benefit-to-cost ratio of $6.60 for every $1.00 invested in the program.

The Bottom-line at the Top: Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being integrated into every profession. Can relationship educators use AI to help with their curriculum development needs and provide a high-quality product? In this article, a group RE practitioners share their pilot-testing journey using AI to help develop new e-courses. They learned that AI assistance can significantly shorten the development time required for new e-courses and even help improve curriculum in some ways. But they argue there is a need for some best practices, and they alert developers to key considerations and concerns. AI still needs knowledgeable and careful human oversight when assisting with RE curriculum development.

The Bottom-line at the Top: Program evaluation researchers looked at two different ways to measure participants’ change as a result of a relationship education (RE) program: (1) the traditional pre-post design that compared targeted outcomes before and after the program, and (2) a retrospective-pre-post design. In this kind of research design, participants are asked at the end of the program to think back to their relationship before the program started and report their levels of a targeted outcome. Then they also report their current levels on these outcomes. How do these two methods of assessing change compare? The researchers found that the traditional pre-test reports could not be compared to post-test reports – that they were no longer “equivalent measures” – so they could not be used to assess average change. On the other hand, retrospective-pre-test reports and post-test reports were “equivalent measures,” so they could be used to assess change in program outcomes. RE evaluation researchers may need to use retrospective-pre-post designs to adequately capture change in certain kinds of outcomes in RE programs.

Bottom-line at the Top: A recent study investigated whether brief instruction on relationship mindfulness – mindfulness practices specifically focused on awareness in the relationship – integrated into a larger couple relationship education program could improve relationship mindfulness and enhance other program outcomes. The researchers found improvements in relationship mindfulness at the end of their ELEVATE program 6-12 months later for this sample of mostly economically stressed couples. And importantly, they found that improvements in relationship mindfulness at the end of the program predicted greater positive change in relationship quality and skills down the road.