Friday, 14 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session I

Evaluating a Dating and Sexual Violence Prevention Program: Changes in Knowledge, Attitudes, Controlling and Aggressive Behaviors

Purpose: Numerous prevention programs have been developed to address the increasing numbers of adolescents experiencing dating violence. However, most programs have been implemented in high schools and empirical evaluations of prevention programs in middle schools remain rare. Among the few evaluation studies of prevention programs examining change beyond the immediate effects, only a handful of studies have examined behavioral change (e.g., Foshee et al., 1998). Studies evaluating prevention programs with minority adolescents in the inner city are particularly absent in the literature. This study examined the changes in knowledge, attitudes, controlling behaviors, and aggressive behaviors of African American middle school youth following their participation in dating and sexual violence prevention program that sought to increase their knowledge, increase their intolerance of relationship violence, reduce controlling behaviors and reduce aggressive behaviors.

Methods: One-hundred thirty African American middle school students in a low-income urban community attended a 12-session, gender-separated prevention program facilitated by trained leaders. The program included videos, role-plays, experiential exercises, and discussion groups about violence dynamics, rape myths, rights and responsibilities in healthy relationships, risk factors and communication skills. Students in the program and in a comparison group (n=35) completed pretest, posttest and 6-month follow-up surveys.

Results: Girls in the prevention program significantly increased their knowledge of resources to assist with dating and sexual violence (p=.001); boys significantly (p=.040) increased in their general knowledge of dating and sexual violence. Changes were maintained at 6-month follow-up. Youth in the comparison group had no change in their general knowledge related to dating and sexual violence or in their knowledge of available resources to assist youth. Across all youth in the program, pretest mean scores (M=5.81, n =57, SD=1.52) related to the intolerance of dating and sexual violence significantly (p=.016) increased at posttest (M=6.41, n=57; SD=1.43). Youth in the comparison group reported a significant decrease (p=.002) in their intolerance of dating and sexual violence. For girls, changes were maintained at 6-month follow-up (p=.031). Boys reported a significant decrease (p=.033) in the use of controlling behaviors following participation in the program; girls did not. No changes were maintained at 6-month follow-up. There was no change among students in the comparison group. Youth in the program reported no changes in their use of aggressive behaviors. However, youth in the comparison group reported a significant (p=.042) increase in the use of aggressive behaviors.

Implications for practice: Findings suggest that inner city, middle school youth are amenable to attitude and knowledge change through prevention programming and that some changes can be maintained. However, the challenge of impacting behavioral change among youth is paramount. Prevention programs targeting youth in communities where violence is widespread may need to place a greater emphasis in teaching skills for youth to find alternative ways to deal with the conflict they face.

Reference: Fosheee, V. A., Bauman, K. E., Arriaga, X. B., Helms, R. W., Koch, G. G., Linder, G. F., & Fletcher, G. (1998). An evaluation of Safe Dates, an adolescent dating violence prevention program. American Journal of Public Health, 88(1), 45-50.

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