The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically reduced our ability to collect reliable data. Despite these setbacks we are determined to launch our usual annual survey as well as a shorter survey about participants’ COVID-19 experience. Please be patient as we work through new logistical hurdles such as social distancing in computer labs and student researcher shortages.

The Couple Relationships and Transition Experiences (CREATE) project is randomized, nationally representative, longitudinal study of newly married couples in the United States of America.

After weighing demographics from each county in the country, we randomly selected 239 counties to participate. County, and sometimes state, governments were then contacted for lists of recently married couples. Couples were randomly selected from these lists and invited to participate.

The CREATE Project is comprised of a group of eight scholars with more than 95 years of combined experience in researching family relationships. The Principal Investigator is Dr. Jeremy Yorgason, Ph.D., a professor at Brigham Young University. To learn more about the people running this project, click here.

The purpose of our research is to better understand how life events and changes affect marriages. We are following couples from around the country to better understand how they respond to change and the negative or positive outcomes of stressful events. This will be accomplished by sending surveys to couples at the beginning of their marriage and then follow-up surveys after any of the life events found in Holmes & Rahe’s 1967 research.

Your personal information will only be used to contact you for follow-up to the initial survey. The information will be kept private and only made available to those on the CREATE team who need to know who you are for the purposes of connecting follow-up surveys to your initial survey. Access to your information will be kept as limited as possible. No personal information will be distributed to any third parties or used for any purpose beyond the research. No personal information will be included in any publications of research conducted through the CREATE project.

We are required to maintain confidentiality of all responses and for all participants, including your spouse. You may share your answers with your spouse, but we will not. Please do not answer the surveys together, however, as we want you to be as truthful with us and yourself as possible.

If you and your spouse go through separation or divorce, please continue to participate in our survey! Separation and divorce are part of life and sharing your experience through the CREATE survey will help others. You are still eligible to participate and receive compensation. Just use the link we sent in your email and indicate your new relationship status.

Congratulations! We are excited for you to continue to share your relationship experience. Just indicate your new relationship status in the survey. We would also love for your spouse to join the project. Please enter your spouse’s email address and we will send them their own invitation.

Qualtrics is a company that hosts online surveys. We have partnered with them in order to smoothly administer the CREATE Surveys. Any contact you have from them will only be for the purposes of the CREATE Project. Additionally, Qualtrics does not disclose any of your data to third parties.

If you are having trouble receiving your Amazon Gift Card, make sure to check your spam folder in your email or ask your spouse if they have received it. If you are still having trouble, please don't hesitate to contact us by clicking here. The typical response time is 2-3 business days. We will do everything we can to get that gift card to you.

A longitudinal study is a research study in which the same people are followed over an extended period of time and surveyed at multiple time points. This differs from other research that only surveys people once or twice in a very short period of time.

The CREATE Project is funded by the Family Studies Center at Brigham Young University. The Family Studies Center uses private donations and endowments to conduct high quality research on a variety of topics connected to families. For more information on what the Center does please click here.

As we conduct our research, we send out batches of emails and sometimes your link is in a later batch. Other times, your spam filter may have accidentally caught our email. If you are curious as to your status in the study, need a new link, or have any other questions, please contact us by clicking here!