There has been much growth in the interest in and use of family-level and dyadic level theories and methodologies to explore the influence of social relationships on health and the influence of health on social relationships. Social relationships include those with romantic partners, friends, siblings, children and care professionals these individuals play a significant role in the physical health, mental health and well-being of a patient. An important part of this includes medicines optimisation and illness management. Studying health and well-being and consideration of both partners in the context of these close social relationships is clearly important in health research; as such both partners become the unit of study – also known as a dyad. The aim of this paper is to provide an introduction and overview as to how dyads might be used in medicines optimisation and illness management research. This aim will be achieved through the following objectives: dyadic study designs used in health research; some of the challenges that can occur in recruitment and data collection and strategies that can be used to overcome them; dyadic data analysis: some methodological and substantive considerations that require consideration when using dyadic data analysis.

在探索社会关系对健康的影响以及健康对社会关系的影响方面，人们对家庭层面和二元层面的理论和方法的兴趣和使用有了很大的增长。社会关系包括与浪漫伴侣、朋友、兄弟姐妹、儿童和护理专业人员的关系，这些人在患者的身体健康、心理健康和福祉中发挥着重要作用。其中一个重要部分包括药物优化和疾病管理。在这些密切的社会关系的背景下研究健康和福祉以及考虑双方的关系在健康研究中显然很重要；因此，双方成为学习单位——也称为二元组。本文的目的是介绍和概述二元组如何用于药物优化和疾病管理研究。这一目标将通过以下目标实现： 用于健康研究的二元研究设计；招聘和数据收集中可能出现的一些挑战以及可以用来克服这些挑战的策略；二元数据分析：使用二元数据分析时需要考虑的一些方法和实质性考虑。