A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of marriage enrichment programs on marital intimacy

Intimacy refers to the interaction between couples that leads to feelings of closeness and love. Couples need skills to maintain and increase intimacy in their relationship. There are various approaches to enriching marriages to teach couples these skills. Wile studies indicate that these programs are effective and by considering  the increasing apply of these preventive intervention, no meta-analysis has been accomplished on marriage enrichment programs and to identify a program that will be more effective on coupleschr('39') intimacy.

The aim of this study was to answer two basic questions including determining whether marriage enrichment programs are effective and in this case, which marriage enrichment program has a large effect size.

In this study of Meta-analysis methods was used. The statistical population of this meta-analysis included 44 articles related to the research topic that were identified in Iranian and Latin databases. The sample consisted of 17 studies and (18 effects size). Then, base on the present research interior measure criterion, 17 articles (18 effect sizes) were selected as a sample.  The research tool was a meta-analysis checklist and related research.

A meta-analysis findings showed that marriage enrichment programs on marital intimacy were, overall, effective with a weighted effect size of 1. 295. Moderator analysis of the overal effect size showed that Emotion- focused of marriage enrichment program  had the highest effect size on in promoting intimacy (d= 4/080).

The final finding of the present study indicated the effectiveness of marriage enrichment programs on promoting marital intimacy. Furthermore, marriage enrichment programs specialy emotion-focused marriage enrichment program for promoting intimacy is suggested to the family and marriage counsellors.