NCT06948877

"Up-Armoring" At-Risk Military Couples: A Stepped Approach to Early Intervention and Strengthening of Military Families

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 581 (actual)
• Sponsor: Wright State University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The study tested whether giving young, partnered military service members access to an online relationship help website would help prevent future relationship problems compared to partnered service member who did not have access to the website

Detailed description

This study tested whether access to a self-directed, online couple intervention offered preventively lessened the occurrence of future negative relationship outcomes (i.e., relationship dysfunction, infidelity, intimate partner violence (IPV) for partnered service members in comparison to the usual resources for relationship assistance in the military. Participants were active-duty military in a committed romantic relationship of at least 6-months duration (N = 581; 37.2% married) who had recently completed basic military training and were transitioning into technical training to learn a specific job skill set. Participants were randomly assigned by in-processing week to the intervention or the control condition. The intervention effect was modeled using both Intent to Treat (ITT) and Complier Average Causal Effect (CACE) approaches.

Conditions

• Couples Therapy
• Military Family

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	ARMOR Online	The online version of ARMOR comprised three core components. The first was an MI-based relationship "check-up" with a brief relationship assessment. In the second component, SMs chose relationship improvement domains from a list of 10 topic areas or modules and watched a short (5-7 minute) video on their chosen area providing (a) evidence-based or evidence-informed psychoeducation, (b) modeling of skills, and (c) practice of the skills. For the third component, SMs were asked MI's "key question" (i.e., "What's the next step?" Miller \& Rollnick, 2023) and, if desired, completed a planning module where they were given the opportunity to create a personalized action plan (specifying how they might test any planned changes to see if they had the desired impact).

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-10-19
• Primary completion: 2024-09-30
• Completion: 2024-09-30
• First posted: 2025-04-29
• Last updated: 2025-04-29

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States