BYU Professor Lee N. Johnson created the MFT-PRN to transform research into a tool that strengthens marriage and family.
This year’s Virginia F. Cutler lecture was given by Lee N Johnson, professor of family life, on October 7, 2025. In his lecture “Research as an Intervention: Improving Relationships and Mental Health”, Johnson spoke about the journey of the innovative tool he created to strengthen families: The Marriage and Family Therapy Practice Research Network.
Also referred to as MFT-PRN, the research network is an online collaboration of clinical professionals committed to improving marriage and family therapy outcomes by using standardized assessment tools — questionnaires given to clients to analyze their treatment needs and progress. The data collected from these assessments streamlines the process of research, therapeutic applications, and client feedback to improve the experience of and benefits from marriage and family therapy.
Johnson serendipitously fell into family science when, in his freshman year at Brigham Young University, he was unable to get into a psychology class and was advised to take a family science class instead. The positive experience he had in this class spurred him on to receive an extensive education within the field of family therapy.
The seeds of the research network were planted for Johnson in the 1990s as he was pursuing his doctorate at Kansas State University. While working on a project for his dissertation, he noticed that academic research on marriage and family therapy wasn’t efficiently being transferred to MFT practitioners.
Johnson felt this lag severely handicapped both practitioners and clients and limited positive outcomes in clinical treatment. But identifying this problem helped him develop an innovative solution.
Because MFT practitioners had no data about the success of different treatment protocols and no way to assess the progression of their own clients, they relied on their intuition to determine what therapies worked and when patients showed improvement. To do more, practitioners needed data — specifically from clinical assessments. Johnson believed that providing standardized assessments before and during therapy sessions would help therapists identify and address clients’ individual needs in clinical treatment.
Given the novelty of the internet in the 1990s, the initial process of collecting client assessment data took weeks. Johnson and fellow interns opted to send paper copies of assessments to therapists by mail. Clients filled out the analog forms and therapists mailed them back to the research team. At the time, Johnson’s goal for the project didn’t go past using it for his dissertation — he wasn’t yet considering the potential of his idea.
“In fact, it wasn’t until I got to BYU where that changed,” he says.
Before returning to BYU as a professor in 2013, Johnson finished his PhD at Kansas State in 1998 then worked as a researcher for private practices, a professor, and the program director of marriage and family therapy at the University of Georgia. These experiences gave him a passion for research and showed him how it could be a tool to help others.
However, he knew that using research to create a helpful resource for therapists and clinicians would take more than data collection. It would take collaboration.
“I still need to find a way to engage therapists, right?” Johnson says. He understood that was the key ingredient that would “move family therapy forward.”
Realizing the issue still at hand, in 2018, Johnson formed a committee to lead efforts in collecting and distributing data through an online network. This soon evolved into the research network Johnson runs today.
The research network originally began with data from therapists at BYU and later expanded to universities across the United States. Because Johnson and his committee have the goal to improve therapeutic treatment around the world, the research network went international in 2020 by expanding data collection and services to Türkiye.
Currently, the network collects clinical assessments from more than 14,000 MFT clients in 10 different languages, including English, Turkish, Mandarin, and Spanish. It offers both general assessments to cover the history and background of the patient and more specific assessments related to topics such as divorce or attachment anxiety. The collected data has contributed to research published in dozens of peer-reviewed articles.
By surveying therapists and clinics, Johnson has been able to track the impact of the research network. Responses show that it is improving client participation and treatment, tracking treatment progress, and training of clinical professionals across the globe. Johnson knew the process of creating the research network, getting the collaboration of therapists, and collecting data from assessments was a long-term project but his passion for research that helps others propels him forward.
“Pursue your passions and be stubborn,” Johnson says. "Research takes time. But it’s turning out to be something I’m pretty proud of.”
