Three approaches to marital enrichment: toward optimal matching of participants and interventions

Three approaches to marital enrichment were examined to determine if predictors of client gains could be identified empirically. Direct training of spousal communication skills by one of two male-female co-trainer teams, observation of videotaped simulations of direct training, and bibliotherapy with telephone contacts were the three approaches, and a wait-list control group was also evaluated. Clear predictive relationships emerged between initial indices of marital and family adjustment and prior experience with therapy, and client changes on self-report measures of marital and family adjustment. Different predictors and predictive relationships characterized each of the three different enrichment approaches, and prediction of outcome was more robust for these three trained groups than for the wait-list group. Changes in clients' communication behaviors were not well predicted, leading to the conclusion that attitudinal changes in marital enrichment programs may be facilitated by optimal matching of different clients with the appropriate type of intervention, but that behavior changes are more a function of systematic skills training for all clients.