Cooperation After Divorce: A Randomized Controlled Trial of an Online Divorce Intervention on Hostility

Objective: For many, the divorce process is associated with various degrees of hostility. Such hostility may have implications for a variety of interpersonal relationships, including relationships with the ex-partner, extended family, friends, and coworkers. The current study presents the results of a 1-year longitudinal randomized controlled trial of the "Cooperation after Divorce" (CAD) online intervention platform for adults going through a divorce. Method: Participants included 1,856 divorcees who began the intervention, on average, within 1 week of legal divorce. Participants responded to the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised Hostility subscale at baseline, and at 3, 6, and 12 months postdivorce. Results: Data analyses consisted of mixed-effects modeling and one-sample t tests. The study found that the intervention platform significantly reduced hostility among divorcees over a 1-year period, with an effect that was medium in size. Of note, there were no gender differences in the reduction in hostility over the 1-year period, suggesting that the intervention was equally beneficial to men and women. Moreover, after 1 year, in the intervention group, but not the control group, levels of hostility were reduced to normative national hostility levels. Conclusion: The results suggest that recently divorced people benefit from the online intervention platform in terms of significantly reduced hostility and suggest that the intervention platform may thereby offer long-term public health benefits given previously found associations between higher levels of hostility and health.