Key Takeaways
- The PREPARE Enrich assessment is a 165-question inventory that maps your relationship across 20+ research-backed dimensions before you marry.
- It is built for engaged heterosexual couples who want data, not guesswork, about where their partnership is strong and where it needs attention.
- Unlike personality quizzes, the report is only released through a trained facilitator who walks you through what the numbers actually mean.
- You answer independently, in about 30-45 minutes each, and results are combined into a single 15-page couple report.
- The tool does not predict whether you should marry. It shows you what you are actually walking into.
Most engaged couples know roughly where they agree and where things get tense. Fewer can name the specific pattern, the specific assumption, or the specific family-of-origin habit running underneath. The PREPARE Enrich assessment exists to put words to those patterns before the wedding, not after the first hard year.
Read on for a clear breakdown of what the tool is, how it works, and what it measures.
Where the Assessment Comes From
PREPARE/Enrich was developed at the University of Minnesota by Dr. David Olson and refined over four decades by Life Innovations. More than four million couples have used it, and the research base includes longitudinal studies linking specific assessment scores to later marital outcomes.
That matters because most relationship quizzes online are not validated. This one is. The questions have been tested, retested, and adjusted so that your answers reliably correspond to real relationship patterns, not just how you feel on a Tuesday evening.
How the 165 Questions Are Structured
You and your partner each receive a private access code. You log in separately, answer independently, and the platform combines your responses into one couple report. The question set adapts based on early answers, so engaged couples, cohabiting couples, and couples in second marriages see slightly different items.
A typical sitting looks like this:
- 30-45 minutes per partner
- Done at home on a laptop or phone
- No right or wrong answers, and no time pressure
- Includes Likert-scale items (strongly agree to strongly disagree) plus a few open questions
- Your partner never sees your individual answers, only the combined report
The session with your counsellor comes afterward. That is where the numbers become useful.
What the PREPARE Enrich Assessment Measures
This is the part most couples want to understand. The assessment touches more than 20 dimensions, grouped into five areas.
Communication and conflict
How clearly you each share, how you listen, and what happens when things get hard. The tool identifies specific patterns: one partner shutting down, one partner pursuing, criticism cycles, avoidance, stonewalling. You get a score and concrete examples pulled from your actual answers.
Financial expectations
Where you agree and disagree on spending, saving, debt, giving, lifestyle, and who handles the money. Financial mismatch is one of the most cited sources of marital stress, and most couples never have these conversations in detail before the wedding.
Personality (the SCOPE model)
Five traits that shape how each of you moves through the world:
- Social (energised by people versus energised by solitude)
- Change (comfortable with routine versus drawn to variety)
- Organised (structured versus flexible)
- Pleasing (accommodating versus assertive)
- Emotionally Steady (expressive versus calm under pressure)
Knowing your partner scores high on Change while you score low on Change explains a lot of small friction in advance.
Family of origin
How each of you was raised, what your family treated as normal, and which of those patterns are following you into marriage. This section often surfaces the “aha” moments. Why you respond to criticism the way you do. Why a raised voice feels safe to one of you and threatening to the other.
Roles, intimacy, and shared goals
Expectations around household roles, parenting intentions, sexual expectations, leisure time, and (if you both indicate it applies) spiritual beliefs and shared faith practice.
What the Report Actually Looks Like
The combined report is roughly 15 pages and includes:
- A snapshot of strength areas and growth areas, plotted visually
- Detailed breakdowns of each of the 20+ dimensions with your scores side by side
- A personality summary for each partner using SCOPE
- A relationship dynamics map, including attachment and flexibility patterns
- A family-of-origin summary for each partner
The report is not released directly to you. A trained facilitator, in our case a Registered Psychotherapist, reviews it first and walks you through it during premarital sessions. That is deliberate, because raw scores can read as alarming without context.
Why the Tool Needs a Facilitator
A few growth areas on paper can make a healthy couple panic, and a few glowing strengths can make a shakier couple over-confident. Neither of those is useful. The interpretation session is where the tool becomes practical. Your therapist explains what is genuinely worth attention, what is a normal variation between partners, and which growth areas respond best to which skills. The assessment is the map. The counsellor helps you read it.
How Graceway Wellness Uses the Results
Our team of Registered Psychotherapists is certified in PREPARE/Enrich. We review your completed report, pull out the patterns that matter most for your specific relationship, and build the structured sessions around those findings rather than a generic curriculum. For couples who want a Christian counselling lens, the report’s faith questions integrate naturally into the conversation without replacing the clinical work.
If you want to see how this fits into a full programme, our PREPARE/Enrich premarital counselling page walks through session structure and pricing. For a look at how it compares to other premarital options, see our guide to premarital programmes in Ontario.
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is the PREPARE Enrich assessment?
It is a 165-question online relationship inventory developed by Life Innovations over four decades of research. Each partner answers independently, and the combined responses generate a 15-page report mapping your relationship across more than 20 dimensions. It is a diagnostic tool, not a compatibility score.
How long does the assessment take to complete?
Most people finish in 30 to 45 minutes. You and your partner each receive your own access code and answer privately, so the results reflect honest individual views rather than a consensus. You only need to complete it once per couple, per version.
What does the assessment actually measure?
Twenty-plus relationship dimensions including communication, conflict resolution, financial values, roles and expectations, sexual expectations, leisure activities, family of origin, spiritual beliefs where relevant, and five core personality traits through the SCOPE model.
Can we see our results without a counsellor?
No. The report is only released through a trained facilitator. This is intentional, because the numbers need context, and a few growth items on paper can feel alarming without someone walking you through what they mean. At Graceway Wellness, our team reviews your report with you during premarital sessions.
Is this the same as the ENRICH version for married couples?
Same research base, different question set. PREPARE is calibrated for engaged and pre-married couples. ENRICH is for already-married couples wanting to strengthen their relationship. Your therapist selects the version that fits where you are.
The assessment itself takes a single sitting. What you do with the results is the work of the next several weeks, and that is the part we can walk alongside you for.
