The effect of marital intensive therapy on severely distressed marriages

This study used multilevel modeling (MLM) to examine trajectories of change for 1,726 severely distressed, married individuals receiving conjoint or group intensive therapy at a Christian marriage organization. Outcome assessments included the Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale, Quality of Marriage Index, and Dyadic Adjustment Scale - 4. Baseline to 12-month paired t-tests revealed large effect sizes for conjoint (d = .79) and group (.71) participants. However, scores remained in the moderately distressed range. Group participants made stronger gains at post-test (d = .183) whereas conjoint participants made significantly greater gains at six months (d = .244). When both spouses participated in the study, they made significantly stronger gains as compared to single spouse participants across all assessment occasions (d = .459).