Designing and validation of premarital counseling package based on schema therapy approach

Choosing a spouse is one of the most complex and significant choices that most people face at least once in their lifetime. One of the reasons for incompatibility and persistence of problems between couples is the existence of early maladaptive schemas. Based on the schema therapy approach, there is a presumption that people use irrational and unrealistic criteria for choosing a spouse according to their schemas. The purpose of this study is to designing and validation a premarital counseling package based on the schema therapy approach. The development of premarital counseling package is practical in terms of purpose and is in the category of qualitative studies and content analysis. The statistical population includes books and articles that were selected based on the schema therapy approach and became the basis for studying and analyzing information due to their familiarity with the method and process of premarital counseling and “Reinventing your life” and “Schema therapy” books were purposefully selected as a statistical sample. Then, the premarital counseling package based on the schema therapy approach was developed and presented in the form of eight sessions, each session consisting of three parts goal, technique and task, for sixty minutes. The validity of this package was examined using the opinions of 11 expert professors in the field of research. To check the validity of this package, the content validity ratio index (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were calculated, which are equal to 0.88 and 0.89, respectively. The results showed that this package has an acceptable validity and the components of this package can be correctly formulated and used in premarital counseling