Background. As the divorce trend among Indonesian Muslims continues to increase, it is increasingly important for families and stakeholders to find a more innovative and effective solution to minimize the risk of divorce and build a healthy marriage. Although research findings demonstrate a significant role of religion for marital quality, scientific evaluation of integrating Islamic values into family education programs to improve marriage readiness has not been widely practiced. This study examined the effectiveness of the Islamic Family Education Program to improve marriage readiness.

Methods. To test the hypothesis confirming that marriage readiness after attending an Islamic-based family education program would be higher than before the program, the present study used a repeated measurement design and involved 16 unmarried young adults (age range 19-31 years). The Marriage Readiness Scale (Ghalili, Etemadi, Ahmadi, Fatehizadeh, & Abedi, 2012) which consisted of mental readiness for marriage, moral readiness for marriage, emotional readiness for marriage, interpersonal readiness, and marital life skills, was completed by each participant in pre and post-test treatment.

Results. The effect size estimate indicates that the differences in marriage readiness created by Islamic Family Education Program represents a large effect and therefore substantive effect.  Implications for future programming and research are discussed.

Conclusion. Islamic Family Education Program significantly has a large and substantive effect on improving marriage readiness of emerging adults in Indonesia.

Keywords: Islamic-based Family Education Program, Marriage Readiness, Emerging Adults