Assessments Bradbury’s (1995) artic

Assessments

Bradbury’s (1995) article on assessing the four fundamental domains of marriage is addressed to clinicians, but some of the observations are relevant for clergy providing marriage preparation. Bradbury noted that standardized assessments are essential in clinical activities with couples and are able to provide information about a couple beyond what can be obtained through interviews. However, he also observed that standardized assessment is not routine practice for the majority of marital and family therapists. He suggested several reasons for this infrequent use of available instruments, including the belief by practitioners that such procedures would not enhance the quality of their interventions. Another possible explanation for the failure to use assessments is that so many instruments are available that practitioners cannot evaluate their appropriateness for their own use. If Bradbury’s observations about professional therapists are true, it is reasonable to assume that clergy also would be slow to use assessments because of doubts about the usefulness of the procedure or because of their uncertainty about which instrument would be most helpful in marriage preparation. Early analysis of PREPARE suggested that scores from the inventory would predict with 80-90% accuracy which couples would separate or divorce within 3 years of taking the inventory (Fowers & Olson, 1986). The external validity of the premarital typology based on PREPARE (Fowers & Olson, 1992) received clear support in a study examining the relationship between the four couple types and marital outcomes (Fowers et al., 1996). The four couple types differed in the predicted manner in their marital outcomes. The study also found that the couple types differed in the likelihood that they had canceled their marriages. Conflicted couples, which made up about 40% of the 50 couples that canceled their marriages, were more than three times as likely as Vitalized couples to have canceled marriage plans. The authors suggest that these findings provide indirect evidence that taking PREPARE may contribute to helping high-risk couples reconsider their marriage plans as a result of identifying relationship difficulties. Similarly, Williams and Jurich (1995) found that FOCCUS successfully predicted the future marital success of most couples. Halford (2004) suggests strengths and weaknesses of using the inventory-based approach to relationship education. The first strength is that the most widely used inventories all assess factors relevant to relationship outcomes, predicting the trajectory of relationship satisfaction in the early years of marriage. Second, the instruments give couples the opportunity to assess their risk and resilience profiles. Third, those who use these inventories receive structured training. As a weakness, she cited the lack of published systematic evaluation of long-term benefits of programs based on the inventories. A second weakness is the exclusive reliance on potentially inaccurate selfreport assessment.

Kết quả (Việt) 1:

Đánh giá Bradbury’s (1995) article on assessing the four fundamental domains of marriage is addressed to clinicians, but some of the observations are relevant for clergy providing marriage preparation. Bradbury noted that standardized assessments are essential in clinical activities with couples and are able to provide information about a couple beyond what can be obtained through interviews. However, he also observed that standardized assessment is not routine practice for the majority of marital and family therapists. He suggested several reasons for this infrequent use of available instruments, including the belief by practitioners that such procedures would not enhance the quality of their interventions. Another possible explanation for the failure to use assessments is that so many instruments are available that practitioners cannot evaluate their appropriateness for their own use. If Bradbury’s observations about professional therapists are true, it is reasonable to assume that clergy also would be slow to use assessments because of doubts about the usefulness of the procedure or because of their uncertainty about which instrument would be most helpful in marriage preparation. Early analysis of PREPARE suggested that scores from the inventory would predict with 80-90% accuracy which couples would separate or divorce within 3 years of taking the inventory (Fowers & Olson, 1986). The external validity of the premarital typology based on PREPARE (Fowers & Olson, 1992) received clear support in a study examining the relationship between the four couple types and marital outcomes (Fowers et al., 1996). The four couple types differed in the predicted manner in their marital outcomes. The study also found that the couple types differed in the likelihood that they had canceled their marriages. Conflicted couples, which made up about 40% of the 50 couples that canceled their marriages, were more than three times as likely as Vitalized couples to have canceled marriage plans. The authors suggest that these findings provide indirect evidence that taking PREPARE may contribute to helping high-risk couples reconsider their marriage plans as a result of identifying relationship difficulties. Similarly, Williams and Jurich (1995) found that FOCCUS successfully predicted the future marital success of most couples. Halford (2004) suggests strengths and weaknesses of using the inventory-based approach to relationship education. The first strength is that the most widely used inventories all assess factors relevant to relationship outcomes, predicting the trajectory of relationship satisfaction in the early years of marriage. Second, the instruments give couples the opportunity to assess their risk and resilience profiles. Third, those who use these inventories receive structured training. As a weakness, she cited the lack of published systematic evaluation of long-term benefits of programs based on the inventories. A second weakness is the exclusive reliance on potentially inaccurate selfreport assessment.