Evaluation of CFT pre-marriage courses

The first formal evaluation of UK marriage preparation - using mentoring and inventories - took place in late 2003. Academics from Exeter University analysed 733 response forms from ten Community Family Trusts (CFTs) around the UK - including BCFT. 343 forms were completed before a course and 390 forms afterwards.

Participants tended to be better-educated higher-income church-going couples. 54% had university level education, 82% of participants earned income below the national average, and 56% were regular church-goers. In some areas of life, the sample was more representative. For example, 68% of couples were cohabiting and 29% came from broken homes.

All of the CFTs were using inventories. Nearly all used the FOCCUS inventory and nearly all used mentor couples rather than single facilitators.

The evaluation showed that mentoring increases confidence well above already high starting levels, across a range of ten issues relevant to married life. Levels of confidence increased especially in being able to discuss "sharing hopes and dreams", "sexual behaviour" and "making decisions". Programmes also had a particular impact on areas where people feel most doubtful to begin with, notably "resolving conflict", "sexual behaviour" and "issues about finance". Amongst issues overall, 85% of couples said they were confident before the course started. 92% of couples said they were confident afterwards. The percentage of couples who said they were "very confident" rose from 36% beforehand to 47% afterwards. Given such very high levels of confidence to begin with, it is remarkable that positive change can be recorded at all. On seven of ten issues surveyed, improvements in confidence were both substantial and "statistically significant", i.e. not likely to be due to mere chance. Satisfaction with CFT marriage preparation programmes was also very high and few were dissatisfied.

• Less than 10% of people found their course boring, unsupportive, uninformative or embarrassing.
• Just 2% did not enjoy their course and only one person found it other than well-organised.
• Well over 90% of people said they found their course well-organised, enjoyable, informative, supportive, not scary, not embarrassing, neither boring nor dull, and would recommend it to friends.

People said the courses especially made a difference with "resolving conflict" (76%), "working together" (69%), "general tips" (68%), "knowing each other better" (65%), "knowing we're not alone" (53%) and "dealing with emotions" (50%).