"Up-Armoring" At-Risk Military Couples: A Stepped Approach to Early Intervention and Strengthening of Military Families

Wright State University581 enrolled

Overview

The study tested whether giving young, partnered military service members access to an online relationship help website would help prevent future relationship problems compared to partnered service member who did not have access to the website

This study tested whether access to a self-directed, online couple intervention offered preventively lessened the occurrence of future negative relationship outcomes (i.e., relationship dysfunction, infidelity, intimate partner violence (IPV) for partnered service members in comparison to the usual resources for relationship assistance in the military. Participants were active-duty military in a committed romantic relationship of at least 6-months duration (N = 581; 37.2% married) who had recently completed basic military training and were transitioning into technical training to learn a specific job skill set. Participants were randomly assigned by in-processing week to the intervention or the control condition. The intervention effect was modeled using both Intent to Treat (ITT) and Complier Average Causal Effect (CACE) approaches.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Enrollment

581

Conditions

Couples Therapy Military Family

Interventions

ARMOR OnlineBEHAVIORAL

The online version of ARMOR comprised three core components. The first was an MI-based relationship "check-up" with a brief relationship assessment. In the second component, SMs chose relationship improvement domains from a list of 10 topic areas or modules and watched a short (5-7 minute) video on their chosen area providing (a) evidence-based or evidence-informed psychoeducation, (b) modeling of skills, and (c) practice of the skills. For the third component, SMs were asked MI's "key question" (i.e., "What's the next step?" Miller \& Rollnick, 2023) and, if desired, completed a planning module where they were given the opportunity to create a personalized action plan (specifying how they might test any planned changes to see if they had the desired impact).

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 YearsHealthy volunteers:

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * To be included in the study, participants had to be: (a) in a committed romantic relationship for at least six months and (b) on active duty (not Guard or Reserve). Exclusion Criteria: * Participants with prior military service (i.e., not new to the military who were retraining into a different career field) were excluded.

Locations (1)

Keesler Air Force Base

Biloxi, Mississippi, United States

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Marital Satisfaction Inventory-Brief (MSI-B; Whisman et al., 2009)

The MSI-B is a true-false, self-report measure of relationship distress derived from the full The MSI-B is a true-false, self-report measure of relationship distress derived from the full True-false, self-report measure of relationship distress

Time frame: six months

Family Maltreatment measure (Heyman et al., 2021)

Whether the participant or partner had engaged in intimate partner violence

Time frame: six months

Infidelity

Whether the participant or partner had been intimate with non-partner

Time frame: six months

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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