ANGELA B. BRADFORD,FRANCESCA ADLER-BAEDER,SCOTT A. KETRING, AND THOMAS A. SMITH Auburn University The Role of Participant-Facilitator Demographic Match in Couple and Relationship Education Offerings of couple and relationship education in recent years have included more diverse populations of participants, as well as more diverse facilitators in community-based pro- gram delivery. As a result, the opportunity has emerged to examine contextual factors that may impact program effects. This study examined the relationship between participant-facilitator demographic match of ethnicity, sex, education, and relationship status on reported facilitator quality and program outcomes, as well as the relationship between facilitator quality and pro- gram outcomes. Results indicated that sex match was related to facilitator quality. Relationship status match was related to change in couple functioning, and education match was related to change in individual functioning. Additionally, facilitator quality was related to program out- comes. Findings suggest the value of adopting an additive approach to program implementation, in which facilitation quality and skills and sim- ilarity between participant and facilitator are considered. Recently, advances have been made in the study of couple and relationship education (CRE) through the implementation and study of experiences among more diverse populations Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Auburn University, 203 Spidle Hall, Auburn, AL 36849 (angela.b.bradford@gmail.com). Key Words: couple/marriage education, demographic match, facilitator, relationship education. (Adler-Baeder et al., 2010; Hawkins & Fackrell, 2010; Stanley, Allen, Markman, Rhoades, & Prentice, 2010). Because studies in previous decades utilized mostly homogenous samples of married or premarital European American, middle-class couples (Halford, Markman, & Stanley, 2008; Hawkins, Blanchard, Baldwin, & Fawcett, 2008), the focus was limited to assessments of program effects for the full sam- ple of participants. With the increasing access to CRE for participants diverse in ethnicity and socioeconomic status, opportunities to examine possible variations in experiences are available. In addition, previous university-based CRE pro- grams offered limited variability in facilitator background. With the increase in CRE offer- ings for diverse populations, many programs involve community-based delivery by facili- tators with more diverse backgrounds (Ooms & Wilson, 2004) and offer the opportunity to explore variations among facilitators. The use of an ecocultural lens (Phenice, Griffore, Hakoyama, & Silvey, 2009) involves the con- sideration of differing cultural contexts that may influence the program experience for individual participants and calls for investigations of inter- vening factors that can include characteristics of the participants, characteristics of the program facilitators, and combinations of these variables. In studies of intervention, increasing attention is given to discussion of cultural differences as antecedents of change. As programs and research include more diverse populations, scholars assert that such characteristics as education, ethnicity, and sex are likely to have a significant impact on an individual’s experience and suggest that Family Relations 61 (February 2012): 51 – 64 51 DOI:10.1111/j.1741-3729.2011.00679.x