A Randomized Control Trial of a Bystander Intervention Program to Prevent Sexual Violence

Background and purpose: Sexual assault affects millions of women each year, with an estimated 19- 25% of women and 6% of men reporting experiences of attempted or completed sexual assaults since entering college. A multitude of negative impacts on survivors’ health and well-being has been documented by ongoing research.  Many social workers are involved in the creation and implementation of sexual violence prevention programs, especially for high school and college students. One increasingly popular approach for sexual assault prevention is bystander intervention, which shifts the focus on victims and perpetrators to the role of community members, suggesting that these members can intervene when faced with situations involving sexual violence (before, during, or after the assault). 

A number of questions remain about the best ways to deliver bystander education and what dosage is sufficient to produce both attitudinal and behavioral change.  This paper uses a longitudinal, experimental design to compare exposure to one or three sessions of a peer education theater program, SCREAM Theater, and its impact on a range of bystander-related outcomes in situations involving sexual violence.

Methods: Undergraduate students were randomly assigned to receive one or three doses of SCREAM Theater. The analysis for this paper examined three waves of data, including the survey administered at baseline, after the first intervention (that all participants received), and one month after the second and third intervention (that only the experimental group received). A number of outcomes were assessed, including bystander attitudes, bystander efficacy, perceptions of friend’s bystander norms, and bystander behaviors.  A total of 663 participants completed surveys across three waves and are analyzed in this paper. A series of MANOVAs and ANOVAs were run to test the impact of gender and experimental assignment (one versus three dose groups).

Results: Both groups (one and three dose) improved on their scores on all outcomes except for efficacy, indicating that exposure to peer education theater provided benefits for both groups. The experimental three dose group had significantly better multivariate outcomes relative to the one dose control group.  Women consistently scored better on all outcomes.

Conclusions and implications:  Peer education theater offers an important tool for providing sexual violence education. Additional sessions of sexual violence programming yielded better outcomes.  Social workers and others who provide sexual violence prevention education should consider the implementation of multi-dose sessions when possible.  Additionally, men’s lower scores across all outcomes suggests that gender-specific information should be infused in sexual violence prevention efforts.