Abstract: Marriage education (ME), based on empirical research, is a preventive-oriented psychological education model, which has been widely studied and promoted in the past four decades. As a way of universal prevention, the formation and development of ME mainly target middle-class higher-functioning couples in the pre-marital stage. The current research focuses on the selective prevention of couples in poverty and other disadvantage situations and indicated prevention of couples in the early stages of depression. As ME, based on the three-stage preventive model, still has many deficiencies in the theoretical basis and research methods, further development of ME should focus on in-depth research in theory and research, project design and implementation.

Key words: marriage education, universal prevention, selective prevention, indicated prevention