Publication date: Jan 06, 2025

This study examined whether the Seoul Premarital Education Program (S-PEP) was effective when it was delivered via videoconferencing (VC) during the early COVID-19 period. S-PEP is a city-wide educational program designed to prevent marital distress by enhancing premarital readiness and relationship quality for couples. Because a randomized controlled trial was not realistic due to the pandemic, we recruited an intervention group and a no-intervention comparison group independently, who completed both the pre- and posttests. We then employed inverse probability of treatment weighting to derive two comparable groups. The weighted samples of 291 women and 228 men were analyzed separately using linear mixed models. The results showed that S-PEP via VC was effective in increasing levels of marital readiness for both women and men and in enhancing relationship confidence and satisfaction for women. Our findings suggest that VC can be a promising delivery strategy for curriculum-based group interventions for couples.

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Original Article