Awareness of Enneagram Personality Types and Marital Satisfaction among Married Couples in Kiambu County, Kenya

Abstract

This study examined how Enneagram Personality types (enneatypes) awareness influenced marital satisfaction among married couples in Kiambu County, Kenya. Review of current literature indicate conflicting findings where some studies have concluded that Enneagram personality types influence marital satisfaction while others observed that this was not the case. Amidst these conflicting findings, there was need to establish influence of couples Enneagram Personality type awareness on marital satisfaction considering that couples join marriage without any formal sensitization on their personalities. This study used a quasi-experimental time series A-B-A research design. The target population was married couples in Kiambu County. A Multi layered sampling involving purposeful and random sampling was used to select the sample. Priori power analysis was performed using G*power 3.1 software to determine the minimum sample size as 44 couples for each group. A sample of 115 couples was randomly assigned to experimental and control groups where 58 out of the 115 couples were assigned to the experimental group and 57 to control groups. A short form of 60 items free Enneagram Type Indicator test and enneatype awareness and a couple of satisfaction questionnaires were used in enneatypes test, enneatype awareness and marital satisfaction for all the participants in pretest and posttests. Descriptive statistics, correlations, one way ANOVA and paired sample tests were used in data analysis. The findings indicate that integrated enneatypes awareness influenced marital satisfaction and all marital satisfaction sub-variables. The study recommends the need to create enneatype awareness for all couples before marriage or shortly after marriage as a method of enhancing marital satisfaction.