Teaching Couple Relationship Education: The Influence on Regional Extension Agents and Family Life Educators

摘要

Couple Relationship Education (CRE) programs are a prevention resource usedto assist adult individuals, couples, and families reduce relationship distress andimprove prosocial behaviors. Regional Extension agents (REAs) and othercommunity family life educators (FLEs) who teach CRE are involved in afacilitation process that develops relationships and rapport with their participantssimilar to other helping relationships. To date, no published research hasfocused on how CRE may affect the REAs/FLEs who provide the programsthrough community adult education programs. Informed by relational-culturaltheory and the ecological systems perspective, the current study focused onassessing change in ten outcomes measuring REAs/FLEs’ (N = 54) individual,couple, and co-parenting functioning and whether that change differed by gender.Results from repeated measure ANCOVAs indicate REAs/FLEs experience gainsacross several domains of functioning. There were no differences by gender.Implications for REAs/FLEs and suggestions for future research are described