1 - (SYM 30) Trajectories of Relationship Satisfaction Among Rural Black Couples After Relationship Intervention

Couple-based preventive interventions have shown great promise in their ability to enhance and maintain relational well-being. The Protecting Strong African American Families program (ProSAAF) was designed to promote positive couple, parenting, and family interactions among Black families in the rural South. Previous findings have provided evidence of ProSAAF’s overall effectiveness at enhancing relationship functioning and buffering contextual stress among intervention couples relative to control couples. The current study builds on this work by examining within-group variability, specifically focusing on whether there are different trajectories in relationship satisfaction within the intervention condition and the factors that differentiate couples with these different experiences over time.

Black couples with a preadolescent child participated in the intervention (N=170) or control condition (N=174) and reported on their relationship satisfaction using the Quality of Marriage Index pre-intervention and approximately 9, 17, and 25 months later. Group-based trajectory modeling conducted in Stata was used to model (a) different groups of trajectories of men’s and women’s satisfaction over time and (b) predictors of group membership among those receiving the intervention. Groups were also modeled for the control condition to facilitate descriptive comparisons.

Results revealed two subgroups for men and for women in the intervention condition. The largest groups consisted of individuals who started with high satisfaction that remained consistently high over time. The smaller groups of men and women started with more moderate levels of satisfaction that remained stable over time. Several variables predicted group membership; lower depression, better communication, and lower financial strain were associated with higher odds of belonging to the consistently high group. In the control condition, there were also large subgroups of men and women with consistently high satisfaction. Additionally, there was a subgroup of control men and a subgroup of control women with more moderate initial levels of satisfaction that declined significantly over time. These results indicate that the ProSAAF intervention stabilized satisfaction among relatively less satisfied couples, in contrast to control couples who started at a similar level but declined over time. These findings highlight the potential for tailored couple interventions to promote resilience even among couples with individual, relational, and contextual risk.