Development and Validation of the Marriage Monitoring Program

Abstract

Marriage empowerment programs seem to have significant effects on the functionality of families.The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a marriage monitoring program. The research method of this study is sequential exploratory mixed-method. In the first step, 45 internal and external studies related to this research were selected to identify the criteria, executive processes, and the content of the marriage monitoring program through checklist-based systematic review (CAPS). Following the collection of the program protocol and applying the translate-retranslate technique, fifteen specialists including family therapists, couple therapists, and university professors evaluated the content validity (CVR), face validity, and reliability of the program. The measurement tools used in this process were Relationship Check-up questionnaire: areas of strength (RMCQ-S) including 32 items, Relationship Check-up questionnaire: areas of concerns (RMCQ-C) including 43 questions, and Marriage Checkup Questionnaire: Relationship domains Assessment (MCQ-R) including 64 questions. The results indicated the content validity of the Relationship Strengths questionnaire (CVR= 0.76), the Relationship Concerns questionnaire (CVR=0.71) and the Relationship domains questionnaire (CVR=0.66). The value of Kappa coefficientin in this study, was 0.71 percentage of agreement among the evaluators indicating high reliability. Also, the Cronbach's alpha for the scales used in the study was obtained in the relationship monitoring questionnaire: Areas of strength: 0.85,Areas of concern 0.89, and marriage checkup questionnaire: relationship domains assessment 0/81. The results indicated that the marriage monitoring program functions as a preventive and motivational intervention by examining different aspects of marital relationships.

Keywords

• marriage monitoring
• systematic review
• face validity
• content validity
• reliability