Implementing Relationship Education for Emerging Adult College Students: Insights from the Field

Abstract

With federal and state Healthy Marriage Initiatives, greater attention is on education aimed at helping couples form and maintain healthy relationships. Emerging adults attending college are one population of focus for these efforts. Here we briefly describe a relationship education intervention for this population and provide participant feedback from a recent year of the project. Overall findings were that participants perceived the program and the facilitators positively. When asked what was helpful, they identified curriculum delivery (e.g., use of movie clips) and the teaching of skills among other things. Their assessment of the intervention differed by facilitator's gender and years of experience. Implications for relationship education for emerging adults and college instructors are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• couple education
• relationship education
• marriage education
• premarital education