Before Hope Restored Publishes Another Success Rate:
12 Questions Its Longitudinal Study Must Answer
October 4, 2026: Focus on the Family’s Hope Restored Marriage Intensive has publicly promoted it’s “84.5% still married two years later” success claims for years, even though its own published research acknowledged that the evidence did not meet empirical standards and called for more rigorous follow-up research. (See the video synopsis of this article.)
Now, as Hope Restored continues doing the longitudinal research it started a few years ago, I genuinely hope the researchers do it well.
Because this study could answer questions that have gone unanswered for far too long.
Do couples actually become and stay happily married years after attending a Hope Restored Marriage Intensive? Many past participants say no.
This video is a short summary of the article. It is not the full article.
What happens to the people who entered Hope Restored with abuse, coercive control, chronic deception, serial infidelity, dangerous addictions, or severe neglect?
Are they safer afterward? Did they have to separate or divorce? Many past participants say they had to separate or divorce to protect themselves or their children.
And perhaps most importantly:
Will the researchers be willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads—even if the findings are disappointing for Hope Restored?
Their oft-repeated success claim is portrayed on their website using numbers between 80% and 85% of couples are still married two years later.
But this heartbreaking pro-Hope Restored testimonial (below) shows why marriage intensives must measure more than whether couples stay married. Ten years later, her husband’s contempt has largely ceased, but she still rates her marriage a C/C−. Reduced abuse, emotional well-being, safety, and lasting change matter—not just marital survival.
A former Hope Restored participant describes a mixed outcome ten years after attending: her husband’s contempt has largely ceased, and she learned valuable self-care strategies, but she still rates the marriage only C/C-minus and hopes it will someday become an A.
Is this what Hope Restored participants have to look forward to?
There is a reason I am publishing these questions now, before the results are known. We want the standards to be clear in advance. If the study is rigorous, transparent, and independently scrutinized, I will welcome that. If unfavorable findings are never published, important outcomes disappear from the analysis, or the study answers easier questions than the ones posed here, readers will have a public benchmark against which to evaluate it.
That question matters because some of the people who initiated or shaped this research have spent decades building, teaching, promoting, researching, or defending the very marriage model now being evaluated.
Their professional reputations—and in some cases their livelihoods—are closely tied to Hope Restored’s success.
Greg Smalley’s compensation has been substantial—Focus’s 2025 public nonprofit disclosure reports more than $220,000 in total compensation—so the professional and financial stakes are not trivial. Mark Pyatt, who has been connected to the marriage intensive program for more than 20 years, now receives $297,190. Robert “Bob” Burbee and Brett K. Sparks also have their reputations tied to this research.
Focus spent more than $35 million on its marriage program in fiscal 2025, including more than $18 million in salaries and benefits.
Robert Paul’s professional livelihood has been tied to this model for decades. In the National Institute of Marriage’s 2013 IRS filing (over a decade ago, before they merged with Focus on the Family and changed the program’s name to Hope Restored), he was listed as co-president earning $142,214 annually.
That doesn’t invalidate their research.
But it makes rigorous methods, independent scrutiny, conflict-of-interest disclosure, and extraordinary transparency essential.
1. Who exactly will be included in the study?
This sounds elementary, but it is enormously important. I’ve been following the lives of past participants and reading Hope Restored curriculum and listening to the founders’ and leaders’ speeches and interviews for years.
Suppose 1,000 couples attend Hope Restored.
- Do researchers follow all 1,000?
- Or only the couples who finish the intensive? What if only one spouse stays, or only one participates—are they included or excluded?
- What about couples whose therapy is “terminated” after one spouse says the marriage feels too unsafe to continue because that no longer fits Hope Restored’s stated restoration goal?
- What about someone who decides during the intensive that divorce is necessary?
- What about the spouse who never completes a later questionnaire? What about those who don’t participate in the follow-up?
- What about the battered wife who wants nothing more to do with the organization?
Those people cannot simply disappear.
A program can look remarkably successful if dissatisfied participants gradually vanish.
Start with everyone. Tell us what happened to everyone. Don’t cherry-pick the success stories.
2. What happens to the people who stop responding?
This is one of the biggest challenges in longitudinal research: attrition.
People disappear.
They move. They stop answering emails. They divorce. They become angry with the program. They lose interest. They may be so discouraged that they simply do not want to spend more time responding.
And in a program that places such strong spiritual emphasis on having “hope,” believing God can perform a miracle, and presenting oneself as a committed Christian who is still willing to fight for the marriage (and calling you unforgiving if you don’t), some former participants may also feel pressure to report hope, perseverance, or success while they are still inside that culture.
Once they no longer feel hopeful—or once they decide to separate or divorce—they may be especially unlikely to keep participating in follow-up surveys that implicitly measure whether they became the kind of Christian success story the program celebrates.
Attrition becomes especially dangerous when the people most likely to disappear are also the people with poor outcomes: the abuse did not stop, the betrayal continued, the murder-suicide threats continued, or the neglect, indifference, or hostility remained.
Imagine this:
The happily married couples happily respond to another Hope Restored questionnaire.
The separated or divorced participants think, Why would I ever talk to those people again? What a waste of time and money!
If researchers analyze only the people who answer, they may end up measuring the people who remained positively engaged with Hope Restored, not the original population.
That is why I want to see an attrition table.
- How many couples began?
- How many responded at each follow-up?
- How many could not be located?
- How many refused?
- How many divorced?
- How many separated — either legally or informally? (This matters, because my own survey found that 73% of Hope Restored participants chose to separate or divorce after the program, and slightly more separated than divorced. They should not be swept into the group “still married.”)
How many said the program harmed them?
And how were all those missing people handled statistically?
My 2023 survey of 330 past participants of multi-day marriage programs was not a random scientific sample, so it cannot establish Hope Restored’s true success rate. But among 44 former Hope Restored attendees—most of whom found out about the survey through general Christian women’s groups online rather than through my own divorce-focused community—73% had later divorced or separated, and more than 8 in 10 were divorced, separated, or planning to leave. Only 3 of the 44 described themselves as married and happy.
3. Divorce cannot automatically be classified as treatment failure
This is crucial.
If a woman entered Hope Restored married to a violent man and eventually left him, the divorce itself does not tell us whether she failed.
She might be safer.
Her children might be safer.
Her mental health might have improved dramatically.
Conversely, remaining married cannot automatically be classified as success.
A couple can remain married while experiencing fear, coercion, chronic infidelity, addiction, profound neglect, or ongoing abuse.
So please do not give us another study in which:
married = success
and
divorced = failure.
The outcomes need to be much richer than marital status. Safety and respect matter.
4. Will they actually measure abuse?
This may be the most important question of all. And it’s a genuine concern. In 2025, Focus on the Family released a 31-page study on Marriage in America and never mentioned abuse once.
Hope Restored works with couples in severe marital crisis.
That means researchers should not merely ask whether couples feel close, communicate better, or report greater marital satisfaction.
They need to know whether there is:
- physical violence
- coercive control
- sexual coercion
- stalking or intimidation
- financial exploitation
- serial infidelity
- dangerous substance abuse
- chronic deception
- child abuse or endangerment
- threats
- severe neglect
- a secret double life
And they need to distinguish ordinary marital back-and-forth conflict from unilateral harmful conduct.
Otherwise the same problem I have documented in Hope Restored’s Reactive Cycle can simply migrate into the research.
The husband’s intimidation becomes one “reaction.”
The wife’s fear becomes another “reaction.”
And once again, who did what to whom disappears inside the circle.
A proposed reform for Focus on the Family and Hope Restored: measure whether spouses and children are safer after marriage counseling—not simply whether the marriage remains intact.
Robert Paul and Greg Smalley like to call Hope Restored a “marriage lab.” But in a good lab, when an intervention fails, researchers examine the intervention. They do not simply conclude that the subjects failed to work the experiment hard enough. The lab rats would like a word!
5. They need to measure adverse outcomes—not merely benefits
Medical researchers don’t ask only:
Did the treatment help?
They also ask:
Did the treatment hurt anyone?
Marriage interventions deserve the same seriousness.
Did disclosures of fears, needs, and insecurities during couples therapy result in retaliation, dismissal, or other harmful use afterward?
In my 2023 survey, about 3 in 4 Hope Restored attendees who were asked to share those vulnerabilities said their spouse did not use the information in loving and respectful ways afterward.
- Did a participant feel pressured to disclose information to an unsafe spouse?
- Did someone delay leaving a dangerous relationship because the program encouraged continued restoration efforts?
- Did children remain exposed to danger?
- Did someone’s financial situation deteriorate?
- Did symptoms of trauma worsen?
- Did a spouse use information disclosed during the intensive against the other person later?
A meaningful longitudinal study needs a mechanism for capturing harm, not simply insufficient improvement.
6. Researchers must not explain every bad outcome as client failure
This is particularly important because Hope Restored’s own literature gives me reason for concern about how disappointing outcomes may be interpreted.
In books and studies by program leaders and some employees, struggling couples are sometimes framed in terms of insufficient perseverance, motivation, openness, or willingness to keep working—rather than first asking whether the model itself failed, whether one spouse was unsafe, or whether reconciliation was inappropriate.
That pattern appears in 9 Lies That Will Destroy Your Marriage and in Tara Lalonde and Robert Paul’s Empowered to Love, where unsuccessful or painful outcomes can be interpreted through the harmed spouse’s response rather than through the possibility that the relationship itself was unsafe, destructive, or no longer appropriate for reconciliation.
There is a powerful temptation in any therapeutic system to explain success this way: The model worked.
And to describe failure this way: The client didn’t work the model.
- Perhaps the couple wasn’t sufficiently committed.
- Perhaps one spouse wasn’t open enough.
- Perhaps they didn’t persevere.
- Perhaps they failed to use the tools.
- Perhaps they weren’t vulnerable.
- Perhaps they didn’t maintain the gains they made during the intensive.
Some of those explanations may sometimes be true.
But researchers must also be willing to ask:
- Did the intervention fail?
- Was the model wrong for this couple?
- Was the marriage unsafe?
- Did encouraging further vulnerability create harm?
- Would a different intervention have produced a better outcome?
A study of Hope Restored cannot be persuasive if every success demonstrates that the model works while every failure demonstrates that the participants didn’t work the model hard enough.
Robert Paul has said Hope Restored is now about four years into a new longitudinal research effort, with academic involvement from Southeastern University. That is encouraging—but until the methodology, response rates, attrition, safety outcomes, and results are published for independent review, it cannot substitute for transparent evidence supporting the success claims Focus is already making. (See below: “All eyes are on Dr. Thomas Gollery.”)
7. The researchers need to deal honestly with Hope Restored’s old attrition problem
Under its former name, Hope Restored’s leadership published an outcome study years ago.
It has often been cited in ways that make the results sound spectacular.
But the long-term sample became very small. They had a hard time getting people to respond after the first 6 months.
Of 1,043 people originally invited, only 84 couples were represented at the 24-month follow-up. Seventy-one of those couples were still married.
Seventy-one sounds impressive when the denominator is 84.
It looks quite different when readers understand how many people were originally invited.
That doesn’t prove the missing participants divorced.
It proves that we don’t know what happened to most of them.
The new longitudinal research has an opportunity to fix that.
8. The research team needs independence
This is where things become uncomfortable.
Robert Paul has been deeply involved with this model since approximately 1999. He helped develop what became Focus Marital Therapy and the Hope Restored intensive (formerly called National Institute for Marriage), and his work appears prominently in the Smalley relationship books going back more than two decades.
He and other leaders, such as Greg Smalley, have been making sky-high success claims for many years. Back in 2004, their book, The DNA of Relationships, publicly claimed a completed five-year study showing “93 percent of the couples are still together—and thriving in solid, healthy relationships!” (p. 5) The book calls the results “staggering” and repeatedly uses miracle language.
But those bold claims disappeared after they published a new report in 2011. No “93%” still together. No “thriving,” “solid,” or “healthy” relationship claims. But even that new report wasn’t valid scientifically. The authors admitted to multiple flaws, including not having enough responses at the 1-year and 2-year point.
So the leaders of Hope Restored have a lot riding on this. Their reputations, their income, their careers.
None of that makes these people dishonest.
But it creates researcher allegiance.
If you have spent decades developing a treatment model, teaching it, writing about it, defending it, and building a major ministry with millions of dollars of income around it, discovering that it performs poorly—or causes harm in a meaningful subgroup—would be professionally consequential.
That’s exactly why independent researchers matter.
The people with the greatest investment in a model should not be the only people evaluating whether the model works.
- So who designed this new study?
- Who is paying for it?
- Who controls the data?
- And will the final analysis be conducted by researchers who are truly independent of Hope Restored and Focus on the Family?
This is why so many people trust Consumer Reports. CR buys the products it tests itself rather than accepting free products or outside funding that could create pressure or bias. The whole point is independence: the evaluator should be a neutral third party, not someone financially or professionally invested in the product being evaluated.
The same principle matters in research. The strongest evaluation comes from a neutral third party with no financial, professional, or reputational stake in whether the program succeeds.
9. Conflicts of interest need to be disclosed clearly
This is not theoretical either. It happened just last month.
Erin Smalley’s September 2026 dissertation was an analysis of marriage research connected to Focus on the Family. Yet the dissertation did not clearly disclose her decades-long professional and family ties to Focus—an omission that matters when readers are evaluating possible conflicts of interest.
Her dissertation advisor was Dr. Tom Gollery.
That history matters now.
Researchers don’t become disqualified because they have ties to an organization.
But readers deserve to know those ties.
If someone works for Focus, is married to a senior Focus executive, has participated in Focus’s marriage ministry, or is studying a program developed by close professional colleagues, say so plainly.
Disclosure lets readers evaluate possible bias for themselves.
Non-disclosure does the opposite.
10. Publish the protocol before knowing the answer
One of the best protections against unconscious bias is deciding beforehand:
- What outcomes matter?
- Which time points matter?
- How will divorce be handled?
- How will abuse be measured?
- How will missing respondents be handled?
- What counts as success?
- What counts as deterioration?
- Which statistical tests will be used?
Then publish or preregister those decisions.
Why?
Because once researchers see the results, humans are extraordinarily good at finding reasonable-sounding explanations for why the favorable measure was the important one all along.
We see this in the 2011 survey. One of their 2011 emails told survey participants: “Our desire is to know how effective we are at helping people in their marriages, so your participation regardless of the experience you had at the Intensive, or your experience since, is welcomed.” (See image.)
Click to enlarge: Portion of page 2 of a May 26, 2011, National Institute of Marriage two-year follow-up survey email. NIM told former intensive participants that it wanted to know “how effective we are at helping people in their marriages” and welcomed participation “regardless of the experience you had at the Intensive, or your experience since.”
But remarkably, the published 2011 outcome results do not provide a breakdown of continuing abuse, infidelity, substance abuse, harmful marital dynamics, or separation among participants following treatment.
A credible longitudinal study should make it difficult to move the goalposts after the data arrive.
11. Publish disappointing results too
This may be the real test.
Suppose the study discovers that Hope Restored works wonderfully for couples experiencing ordinary reciprocal conflict.
Wonderful. Publish it.
But suppose it also discovers that the program performs poorly when there is coercive control.
Publish that too.
Suppose serially betrayed spouses do worse.
Publish that.
Suppose couples involving addiction need an entirely different treatment approach.
Publish that.
Suppose a substantial number divorce and report that leaving was the healthiest outcome.
Publish that too.
The purpose of research is not to protect a ministry’s marketing message.
It is to discover what is true.
12. Let independent people see enough information to evaluate the claims
I have a personal concern here.
I have asked Focus on the Family—directly and through Ipsos—nearly half a dozen times for the questionnaire and more detailed results from an earlier publicly released marriage study.
I still have not received the materials I requested.
That is troubling because accepted survey-research standards emphasize transparency, even the AACC (American Association of Christian Counselors) Code of Ethics requires it:
The American Association for Public Opinion Research says publicly reported research should disclose sufficient methodological information to permit independent review, including the sponsor, measurement instruments, population, sampling, data collection, sample sizes, weighting, data processing, and limitations. It also specifically addresses disclosure of panel attrition and says researchers should generally make de-identified data and documentation available for independent verification, subject to appropriate privacy protections. AAPOR
So my request for the next study is simple:
Don’t make outsiders fight for the questionnaire.
Publish it. Be transparent.
Publish the methodology.
Deposit the anonymized dataset with the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) so qualified scholars can examine the details.
Publish the attrition.
Publish the adverse outcomes.
Explain the missing data.
Disclose the conflicts of interest.
Let qualified independent researchers examine the work.
If the evidence is strong, transparency will strengthen Hope Restored’s claims.
All eyes are on Dr. Thomas J. Gollery
Dr. Thomas J. Gollery is a professor of education and quantitative methodologist at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, where he works with doctoral research involving study design, statistics, dissertations, publications, and program evaluation. He earned his doctorate from the University of Florida in Educational Leadership and Exceptional Student Education, with a cognate in research and statistics. Southeastern University
Gollery supervised Erin Smalley’s 2026 Ed.D dissertation. That makes his role especially relevant to questions about research design, disclosure, and methodological rigor in future Hope Restored research.
If he is involved in advising or evaluating or overseeing the final published result in future research connected to Hope Restored, the standard for transparency needs to be higher this time.
- That means clear conflict-of-interest disclosures.
- It means methodological rigor.
- It means no disappearing negative outcomes.
- It means accounting for abuse and adverse effects.
And it means following the evidence even if the evidence threatens conclusions that people involved in the project sincerely hoped would be true.
This isn’t about assuming bad faith.
It’s about recognizing how much is at stake.
There is another constituency the researchers cannot ignore: former participants.
For years, people have contacted me privately after attending Hope Restored.
One thing I heard repeatedly was startling:
They thought they were the only ones.
- They thought theirs was one of the only marriages that Hope Restored hadn’t saved.
- They thought they were the only people who had come away deeply troubled by the experience.
- They wondered whether the failure was theirs, even though they noticed that other couples in their group had separated or divorced later.
That is what happens when disappointing experiences remain private.
- Every person thinks: Maybe it was just us.
I think Focus on the Family benefited for years from the extraordinary loyalty of evangelical Christians—and may have come to rely on it too much.
Many Christians, including divorced Christians and people who had painful experiences at Hope Restored, may have felt pressure to stay quiet because we are all supposed to be “on the same team.”
Criticizing a respected Christian ministry can feel like embarrassing Christianity itself.
That silence had consequences.
Survivor and former-participant stories matter because they test a model against reality.
A success percentage can be debated statistically.
A theoretical model can be defended academically.
But when former participants say:
- Here’s what happened to me.
- Here’s what the therapist told us.
- Here’s what happened when we went home.
- Here’s why I became less safe.
- those accounts demand investigation.
They should not automatically be dismissed as disgruntled clients, non-Christians, unsuccessful couples, or people who failed to apply the tools correctly.
They are data—not necessarily representative data, but important signals that competent researchers should investigate.
I actually want this study to succeed
I don’t mean that I want it to produce a high success rate.
I mean I want it to find the truth.
Robert Paul has said Hope Restored is now several years into longitudinal research. Yet Focus has not, to my knowledge, publicly highlighted preliminary findings from that work. That does not tell us what the results are—but it makes the need for publication and transparency even more important.
If the study is eventually used to support Hope Restored’s marketing claims, the complete methodology and results should be available for independent evaluation.
Maybe Hope Restored is enormously beneficial for a clearly identifiable group of couples.
If so, let’s identify them.
Maybe it is ineffective for another group.
Let’s identify them too.
Maybe some couples should never be sent to conjoint marriage therapy at all.
Let’s find out.
Maybe some people become safer by reconciling.
Maybe others become safer by separating permanently.
Research should be capable of discovering both.
That is what would make a Hope Restored longitudinal study genuinely valuable.
Not another impressive percentage.
Not another testimonial.
Not another claim that marriages have been “saved.”
But an honest accounting of who was helped, who wasn’t, who disappeared from follow-up, who was harmed, who divorced, who became safer, and why.
Because the real test of this longitudinal study will not be whether Hope Restored can produce another impressive success rate.
It will be whether the research design makes it impossible to lose sight of the people for whom Hope Restored did not work.
Given the history of small long-term samples, undisclosed ties, and limited transparency, readers have good reason to watch this study very closely.
The final test of transparency may be whether the study sees the light of day if the findings are unfavorable to Hope Restored.
We don’t know what the new study shows. That is exactly the problem. Publish it.
Start Here: Hope Restored Reviews and Former Attendee Experiences
- Hope Restored Marriage Intensive: Real Results From 44 Former Attendees
Compare Hope Restored’s public claims with the experiences reported by former participants. - When “Restoring Hope” Meant Losing Safety: Patricia’s Story
A detailed account of repeated Hope Restored intensives in a marriage involving serious abuse and safety concerns. - Hope Restored’s Bait-and-Switch: Why Focus on the Family’s Marriage Intensives Disappoint
Examines creator Robert Paul’s teaching about redirecting couples away from “what the spouse did” and toward emotional reactions, cycles, and triggers. - Hope Restored’s Unverified Success Rate: Why a New, Independent Study Is Needed
Examines the flaws in Hope Restored’s 2011 research and explains why a new study must be independent, include couples who dropped out, account for those who did not respond, and track long-term marital satisfaction, depression, divorce, abuse, and safety—not just whether couples stayed married.
How the Hope Restored Model Works
- What Does Hope Restored Teach at Its Marriage Intensives?
A detailed walkthrough of Hope Restored’s curriculum, including the Reactive Cycle, Care Cycle, Heart Talk, “work your own yard,” win-win problem-solving, and how those tools function differently in ordinary conflict, infidelity, coercive control, violence, and child-safety cases. - Why Focus on the Family’s Marriage Advice Fails When One Spouse Is the Problem
Explains the Reactive Cycle and why a reciprocal marriage model can become dangerous when the real problem is abuse, betrayal, coercive control, or serious deception. - Book Review: Empowered to Love by Robert S. Paul and Tara Lalonde. Hope Restored Says Its Model Works. So Who Gets Blamed When It Doesn’t?
A close look at Robert Paul and Tara Lalonde’s teaching on personal responsibility, forgiveness, perseverance, and focusing on your own “yard.” - Book Review: Restoring Hope by Robert S. Paul, Robert K. Burbee, and Christine A. Arnzen
A detailed review of the professional Focus Marital Therapy manual behind Hope Restored.
Safety, Divorce, and Reform
- What Would It Take to Make Hope Restored Safe?
Concrete reforms that could make the program safer for couples dealing with abuse, betrayal, coercive control, and other serious unilateral wrongdoing. - When Hope Restored Stops the Process: Why You Can’t Choose Divorce Inside the Focus on the Family Marriage Intensive
Examines the Focus Marital Therapy policy that does not accept marriage dissolution as a therapeutic goal. - Before You Choose a Focus on the Family Counselor, Ask These 4 Questions
Practical questions to ask before entering marriage counseling, especially when abuse, betrayal, addiction, or coercive control may be present. - A Reform Proposal for Focus on the Family’s Next President: 8 Changes for Safer Families
Specific recommendations for reforming Focus on the Family’s marriage and abuse policies.
About me: I’m an active devout Evangelical Christian who gives, volunteers, and serves. I started leading divorce recovery groups in conservative churches in 1998. I’ve donated thousands of dollars to Focus on the Family, listened to its broadcasts since the 1980s, subscribed to its magazines, bought its books, and sent my children on Brio overseas mission trips. My criticism is focused specifically on Focus on the Family’s teaching and materials about abuse, divorce, and marriage crisis—not its work on adoption, foster care, or other topics.
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