Abstract
Sexual intimacy, characterized as the experience between individuals of sharing general affection and sexual activity with one another within the Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships inventory, is positively related to relationship satisfaction and stability. However, many studies of couple therapy have shown that it only results in small-sized (and often non-significant) improvements in sexual intimacy. Furthermore, there are numerous financial, logistical, and psychological barriers to couple therapy. Thus, the current study sought to examine whether two brief online relationship education programs (OurRelationship and ePREP) could overcome these barriers and yield similar-sized effects to more intensive couple therapy. In two independently collected samples of low-income couples (NSample 1 = 742 Couples; M AgeSample 1 = 33.19; NSample 2 = 671 Couples; M AgeSample 2 = 33.48), the current study found that: OurRelationship (d = 0.24–0.28) and ePREP (d = 0.26–0.34) produced small-sized changes in sexual intimacy relative to a waitlist control condition in both samples, the magnitude of the effect size replicated in a second sample and, with rare exception, these changes were generally not moderated by key variables of interest. Given that web-based relationship education is significantly shorter, less expensive, and more accessible than in-person couple interventions, web-based relationship education could be considered a viable candidate for couples experiencing concerns with sexual intimacy.
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Data Availability
All methods and measures were preregistered with the Open Science Framework. All R scripts have been uploaded to the following web page for review (https://osf.io/wsh7g/).
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Funding
Funding for this project was through the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant 90FM0063 awarded to Brian D. Doss and Grant 90PD0309 awarded to S. Gabe Hatch. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.
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Brian D. Doss is a coinventor of the intellectual property used in this study and an equity owner in OurRelationship, LLC.
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Before recruiting participants, permission was sought and granted from the University of Miami IRB. All participants consented to this study.
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Hatch, S.G., Guttman, S., Rothman, K. et al. Does Web-Based Relationship Education Improve Sexual Intimacy? Initial Examination, Replication, and Exploration of Moderation in a Low-Income Sample. Arch Sex Behav 53, 2453–2460 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-024-02876-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-024-02876-8