Development and Evaluation of Curricula or
Development and Evaluation of Sexual Violence/Harassment Prevention Programs in Middle Schools
Ongoing since 2005
Project Director: Nan D. Stein, Ed.D.
Funder: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice
Research Team/Partners:
Caliber Associates: Fairfax, VA (Lead organization, Dr. Lisa
Lunghofer and Mr. Thomas Horwood)
Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA (Dr. Nan Stein: Co-PI)
Police Executive Research Forum (Dr. Bruce Taylor, Co-PI)
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (Professor Vangie
Foshee, consultant)
Rape crisis center and public school districts in the Midwest
of the US
Gender violence and harassment have serious health consequences
for youth, including significantly poorer mental and physical
health, more trauma symptoms, and increased school avoidance.
While schools
have offered and/or implemented varying degrees of prevention/
education about gender violence and harassment, few evaluations
of these programs have been conducted. Therefore, little is known
about the efficacy and effectiveness of these interventions.
The rigor of evaluation studies that have been completed is uneven,
there are virtually no program evaluations that incorporate
qualitative and quantitative methods, and only one has used
an experimental
design. Most research on this topic has been on programs that
target older middle and high school students. To serve as a
true primary
prevention effort, a number of researchers/educators have suggested
that prevention programs need to be geared toward 6th and 7th
grade students.
Goals:
This study is designed to help increase the capacity of programs
to prevent sexual violence and harassment. The long-term goal/objective
of this study is to help prevent intimate partner violence,
sexual violence, and sexual harassment by employing the most
rigorous
methods to evaluate strategies for altering the violence-supportive
attitudes and norms of youth. There will be several benefits,
as well, to schools participating in the research.
The specific aims/objectives of this study are to:
-
evaluate the relative effectiveness of common approaches
to youth sexual violence and harassment prevention programming
(in
terms of knowledge, attitudes, intended behavior, behavior,
and emotional safety of youth participants) for one of
the youngest
populations ever studied; and
-
assess the cost effectiveness of two interventions for
reducing sexual violence and harassment.
• Treatment 1: A communication-based curriculum
that addresses GV/H, by focusing on setting and communicing
boundaries in relationships, the formation of healthy and mutual
relationships/friendships, and the role of the bystander as
intervener (5 hourly sessions over 5 weeks).
• Treatment 2: A law and justice-based curriculum
for GV/H prevention focusing on deterring aggressive behavior
by focusing on laws, definitions, information and data about
penalties for sexual assault and sexual harassment as well as results from
research about the consequences for perpetrators of gender violence
(5 sessions/5 weeks).
• Control group: this group will go through their normal class schedule
and not receive any of the elements of Treatments 1 or 2.
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