University of Denver, Department of Psychology, 2155 South Race Street, Denver, CO 80208-3500, USA.
Behav Ther. 2012 Mar;43(1):99-112. doi: 10.1016/j.beth.2011.01.006. Epub 2011 May 30.
The field of couples relationship education has come to a critical junction. We have generally demonstrated that our interventions work (at least in the short run) but to what extent have we shown that the skills and processes we teach are in fact responsible for the success of the intervention? In this paper we review progress made in understanding mechanisms of change in relationship education, explore limitations of this body of research, explicate the barriers that interfere with progress in understanding mechanisms of change in intervention research, and present recommendations on how to proceed from here. Although our goal in this paper is to focus more on issues in the field rather than to present a comprehensive review of the literature, we provide overarching research summaries to illustrate some of our points. We conclude with offering recommendations for the next generation of research in the couples relationship education field.
夫妻关系教育领域已经到了一个关键的转折点。我们已经普遍证明了我们的干预措施是有效的（至少在短期内是这样），但我们在多大程度上表明，我们所教授的技能和过程实际上是干预成功的原因？在本文中，我们回顾了理解关系教育中变化机制方面的进展，探讨了这一研究领域的局限性，阐明了干预研究中理解变化机制的障碍，并就如何推进这一研究提出了建议。尽管我们在本文中的目标是更多地关注该领域的问题，而不是对文献进行全面综述，但我们提供了全面的研究总结，以说明我们的一些观点。最后，我们为夫妻关系教育领域的下一代研究提出了建议。
