Nan D. Stein

Shifting Boundaries: an experimental evaluation of a dating violence prevention program in middle schools.

We randomly assigned the Shifting Boundaries interventions to 30 public middle schools in New York City, enrolling 117 sixth and seventh grade classes (over 2,500 students) to receive a classroom, a building, a combined, or neither intervention. The classroom intervention included a six-session curriculum emphasizing the laws and consequences for perpetrators of dating violence and sexual harassment (DV/H), the social construction of gender roles, and healthy relationships. The building-based intervention included the use of building-based restraining orders, higher levels of faculty/security presence in safe/unsafe “hot spots” mapped by students, and posters to increase DV/H awareness and reporting. Student surveys were implemented at baseline, immediately after the intervention, and 6-months post-intervention. As hypothesized, behaviors improved as a result of the interventions. The building-only and the combined interventions were effective in reducing sexual violence victimization involving either peers or dating partners at 6-months post-intervention. This was mirrored by reductions in sexual violence perpetration by peers in the building-only intervention. While the preponderance of results indicates that the interventions were effective, an anomalous result (increase in sexual harassment victimization reports that was contradicted by lower frequency estimates) did emerge. However, after analysis these anomalous results were deemed to be most likely spurious. The success of the building-only intervention alone is important because it can be implemented with very few extra costs to schools.

The Effects of Gender Violence/Harassment Prevention Programming in Middle Schools: A Randomized Experimental Evaluation

In this experiment, 123 sixth and seventh grade classrooms from Cleveland area schools were randomly assigned to one of two five-session curricula addressing gender violence/sexual harassment (GV/SH) or to a no-treatment control. Three-student surveys were administered. Students in the law and justice curricula, compared to the control group, had significantly improved outcomes in awareness of their abusive behaviors, attitudes toward GV/SH and personal space, and knowledge. Students in the interaction curricula experienced lower rates of victimization, increased awareness of abusive behaviors, and improved attitudes toward personal space. Neither curricula affected perpetration or victimization of sexual harassment. While the intervention appeared to reduce peer violence victimization and perpetration, a conflicting finding emerged—the intervention may have increased dating violence perpetration (or at least the reporting of it) but not dating violence victimization.

Relationship Violence Prevention Education in Schools: What's Working, What's Getting in the Way, and What Are Some Future Directions.

Abstract This article summarizes five K-12 school-based dating violence prevention curricula/programs that have gone through some form of evaluation and peer review. These programs were selected as a result of a broad and comprehensive review of the relationship violence literature that has been published in the past decade. Program objectives, components, outcomes, and evaluation procedures are compared and discussed. The programs that were reviewed were generally found to be not very effective at preventing relationship violence in the short term, and less effective in the long term, suggesting the need for more program depth, length, and a systematic, longitudinal process for collecting and analyzing data. Reasons for a lack of overall effectiveness in addition to suggestions for future programs and evaluations are discussed.

Obscuring Gender-Based Violence: Marriage Promotion and Teen Dating Violence Research

abstract This article argues that United States public policies have prioritized marriage and healthy relationship promotion over research and education about gendered violence in teen dating relationships, despite evidence of the prevalence of intimate partner and teen dating violence that disproportionately impacts women and girls. The lack of a gender-based analysis reflects a shift from a feminist framing of violence that focuses on the safety and well-being of women and girls based on an analysis of gender, power, and structural inequalities, toward a conservative focus on individualistic solutions to gendered social problems like poverty and violence.

Do schools normalise sexual harassment? An analysis of a legal case regarding sexual harassment in a Swedish high school

ABSTRACT Sexual harassment has become so frequent and ubiquitous in schools that these behaviours have become normalised and expected. In order to prevent the re-enactment and perpetuation of this problem, it is important to explore processes that contribute to its existence. A high school sexual harassment lawsuit in Sweden is used as a case study to illustrate ways that might explain how sexual harassment is normalised at the organisational level. A thematic analysis has been used to identify themes and subthemes. The results show a multi-layered web of factors and practices related to sexual harassment at the organisational level in the school. In order to change a school’s culture from one where sexual harassment is normalised, multiple needs must be addressed: organisational weaknesses must be strengthened; adults enact their responsibility to change the situation; and awareness of the relationship between sexual harassment, gender, and power needs to be increased.