Leadership Characteristics of Directors of Rape Crisis Centers: Implications for Advancing Evidence Based Practice

Background: There is growing recognition of the importance of leadership as a facilitator or barrier to the implementation of evidence based practices within organizations, but very limited research in this area. Even less is known about the leadership characteristics of directors in rape crisis centers (RCCs) or their potential for advancing the adoption of evidence based treatments in this service setting. RCCs provide critical services to survivors of sexual violence who face mental health consequences including PTSD, which increases the risk of revictimization when untreated. There is strong evidence of the effectiveness of several interventions for treating PTSD in sexual assault survivors, but there is low utilization of them in RCCs. This project sought to answer the following questions: 1) What are the leadership characteristics of directors in RCCs? 2) How do RCC directors compare to a normed sample of social service leaders? 3) Are the leadership characteristics of RCC directors conducive to the uptake of evidence based treatments?

Methods: The Consolidated Framework for Advancing Implementation Science (CFIR) was used in the construction of a web-based survey sent to all RCCs in Texas (N=83). The agency response rate was 72% (n=60), which included questionnaires for directors and counselors. For this presentation, only data from agency directors (n=67) is used; some agencies have more than one director that participated. Sample: 97% female; 52 years old; predominately white (81%), 11% Latino, 5% African American; 51% have master’s/PhD degrees, 25% bachelor’s and 24% < bachelor’s.  Measures: the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire was used to compare RCC director responses (n=67) against those normed on national samples of social service agency leaders (n=3,375). Data Analysis: Descriptive statistics & t-tests.

Results: Directors of RCCs most strongly endorsed items reflective of transformational leadership, which includes subscales on inspirational motivation (3.46), individual consideration (3.30), idealized influence-behavior (3.18), intellectual stimulation (3.11), and idealized influence-attributed (3.01). Each of these mean scores fell between the 50^th-70^th percentiles. Although the RCC directors’ scores were slightly higher on the transformational leadership subscales than a normed sample of social service directors, there were no significant differences between them. The RCC directors’ scores on subscales related to contingent reward (2.98), management by exception-active (1.31), management by exception-passive (.85) and laissez-faire leadership (.50) were endorsed less frequently, fell in the 40^th percentile across each subscale, were slightly lower than those from the normed sample of social service directors, but no significant differences were found.

Implications:  RCC directors draw most heavily from characteristics of transformational leadership, particularly inspirational motivation. They convey optimism, enthusiasm, and confidence; lead with high levels of ethics and values; create a supportive climate that promotes learning and growth; and stimulate creativity and innovation. These are leadership qualities that have been found to support the implementation of innovations in practice. These findings suggest that RCC directors have leadership characteristics that would be conducive to the uptake of evidence based treatments.