PREPARE/ENRICH has a high degree of reliability, validity and clinical utility. It provides a comprehensive picture of “his” and “her” perspectives of the couple relationship and also of the couple as a whole. The degree of couple consensus is measured using the Positive Couple Agreement (PCA) score for each area of the relationship. 

 

For Couples:
• Helps increase awareness of both strength and potential growth areas. 
• Stimulates discussion concerning issues vital to their relationship. 
• Primes couple for learning valuable communication and conflict resolution skills. 
• Functions as a preventive tool to help couples become aware of important issues before they turn into major problems.

 Identifying & Building Couple Strengths
There are several reasons why strengths are assessed and highlighted in PREPARE/ENRICH. Strengths are a foundation of a strong relationship. When couples experience stress, their strengths provide resources to help them cope with and manage their stress. Strengths also supply hope and contain overt or latent skills that can be utilized in weaker areas. Strengths are the building block for a healthy relationship and can be foundational in learning relationship skills. Strengths operate differently than “growth areas” across stages of a couple’s relationship. While premarital couples are most aware of their strengths and tend to minimize issues, married couples can readily list issues and have a harder time describing their strengths. Unhappy couples focus mainly on issues (growth areas) and have difficulty identifying any strengths.

PREPARE/ENRICH assesses both strengths and growth areas, allowing a more balanced approach to helping couples become aware of potential issues and remembering their strengths.

SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION OF PREPARE/ENRICH 
Historically, the items and scales in PREPARE/ENRICH have been rigorously tested for both reliability and validity, with excellent results. The national norm base is very large and a couple typology with premarital and married couples has been developed and validated with various ethnic groups. The norm base used is typically about 100,000 couples. For more information and published research articles about PREPARE/ENRICH, go to the website www.prepare-enrich.com and click on “Research”. 
High Levels of Validity: Validity refers to the ability of an instrument to measure the characteristics it was designed to measure. A number of methods exist which attempt to assess validity and they have been used to validate the PREPARE/ENRICH Inventories.

 
Typology of Couples
Five distinct “types” of couples were discovered when cluster analysis was used with a sample of 6,267 couples across ten core categories of PREPARE-ENRICH (Fowers & Olson, 1993). The five types of married couples range from those very high in marital satisfaction to very low: Vitalized, Harmonious, Conventional, Conflicted, and Devitalized.