The Impact of Relationship Wellness Checkups With Lesbian Couples

Abstract

Relationship health impacts many facets of both physical and mental well-being, including depression, heart health, and even children's health. For a variety of reasons, distressed couples often delay entering therapy despite its value in supporting wellness and preventing distress. One early intervention program, the marriage checkup (MC), aims to keep healthy couples healthy with a brief supportive checkup. The MC is based on motivational interviewing principles, and research on MC shows the program has a positive impact on relationship satisfaction, prevents decline, and improves health on other variables such as intimacy. However, past research on MCs has only focused on heterosexual couples. As such, this study explores the research question, "What is the impact of a relationship wellness checkup on lesbian couples' relationship satisfaction?" Using a single-subject design, specifically concurrent multiple-baseline, multiple-probe design, this study extends MC research to an underrepresented population. After conducting checkups over 10 weeks with three lesbian couples, findings show the intervention had a medium effect on satisfaction (nonoverlap of all pairs ¼ .66). These results indicate a relationship checkup can increase satisfaction for lesbian couples. The findings also suggest checkups with lesbian couples can have a comparable impact to their use with heterosexual couples. This study concludes by advocating that the checkup may help lesbian couples stay healthy, providing support for this marginalized group of couples in a time of prejudice.

The Impact of A Marriage Checkup With Transgender Couples

“…In addition, the MC had a moderate effect size with these three transgender couples overall, which is higher than the small effect size with cisgender heterosexual couples (Cordova et al, 2014). Of note, in the pilot studies with gay and lesbian couples, the MC also had a moderate effect size (Minten & Dykeman, in preparation;Minten & Dykeman, 2019). Part of the impact of the MC on these marginalized couples may be a result of countering prejudice.…”

“…Fidelity of the intervention in these two previous studies used a shortened version of Cordova's fidelity assessment (M. M. Cordova, personal communication, October 1, 2014). In one study with lesbian couples, the rater gave the therapist a rating of 39 out of 40 for 98% (Minten & Dykeman, 2019). In the discussion, the rater noted the discrepancy was that the therapist phrased one question differently from the protocol.…”

“…In a study with cisgender heterosexual couples, the MC had a small effect size (d = .29) on satisfaction (Cordova et al, 2014). For lesbian couples and gay male couples, effect sizes were moderate (NAP .66 and .73 respectively) (Minten & Dykeman, 2019;Minten & Dykeman, in preparation), thus the MC demonstrated a potential fit with two groups of marginalized couples as well as effectiveness with larger sample sizes. Prior to this study, no research existed using the MC with transgender or genderqueer couples.…”

The impact of a marriage checkup with transgender couples

“…Coop Gordon et al (2019) found the MC improved relationship satisfaction across race/ethnicity differences and income differences. The MC was helpful for cisgender heterosexual military couples (Cigrang, 2016), and cisgender lesbian and gay couples Dykeman, 2019, Minten andDykeman, 2020). The MC was successfully offered in clinic, home (Coop Gordon et al, 2019), and private practice (Trillingsgaard et al, 2016) settings.…”

“…To increase confidentiality and safety for these marginalized couples, researchers decided not to tape sessions for fidelity review. The therapist for this study was rated during two previous investigations using the MC-rating 39 out of 40 for 98% fidelity in the first study (Minten and Dykeman, 2019) and100% fidelity, and 40 out of 40 in the second one (Minten and Dykeman, 2020).…”