Sharyn J. Potter

Empowering Bystanders to Prevent Campus Violence Against Women A Preliminary Evaluation of a Poster Campaign

Researchers at a midsized public northeastern university evaluated the efficacy of a poster campaign to determine if students increase their knowledge of prosocial bystander behaviors and willingness to intervene in instances of sexual violence after viewing a series of campaign posters where student actors model appropriate bystander behaviors. During the last week of the campaign, undergraduates were invited to participate in a Web survey. The results of this preliminary evaluation indicate promising variation in the awareness of students who reported seeing the campaign compared to those who did not.

Encouraging Responses in Sexual and Relationship Violence Prevention: What Program Effects Remain 1 Year Later?

Colleges and universities are high-risk settings for sexual and relationship violence. To address these problems, institutions of higher education have implemented prevention programs, many of which train students as potential bystanders who can step in to help diffuse risky situations, identify and challenge perpetrators, and assist victims. The impact of bystander sexual and relationship violence prevention programs on long-term behavior of bystanders has remained a key unanswered question for those who seek to offer the most effective programs as well as for policy makers. In this study, the researchers experimentally evaluated the effectiveness of the Bringing in the Bystander® in-person program. Participants were 948 1st-year college students of whom 47.8% were women and 85.2% identified as White (15% also identified as Hispanic in a separate question) between the ages of 18 and 24 at two universities (one a rural, primarily residential campus and the other an urban, highly commuter campus) in the northeastern United States. To date, this is the first study to have found positive behavior changes as long-lasting as 1 year following an educational workshop focusing on engaging bystanders in preventing sexual and relationship violence. Even so, many questions remain to be answered about prevention and intervention of this type. More prospective research is needed on bystander-focused prevention of these forms of violence to help understand and better predict the complicated relationships both between and among the attitudes and behaviors related to preventing sexual and relationship violence. In this regard, we make specific recommendations for designing and evaluating programs based on our findings relating to the importance of moderators, especially two key understudied ones, readiness to help and opportunity to intervene.

Using Social Self-Identification in Social Marketing Materials Aimed at Reducing Violence Against Women on Campus

Bystander-focused in person sexual violence prevention programs provide an opportunity for skill development among bystanders and for widening the safety net for survivors. A social marketing campaign was designed modeling prosocial bystander behavior and using content familiar to target audience members by staging and casting scenes to look similar to the people and situations that the target audience regularly encounters. We refer to this sense of familiarity as social self-identification. In this exploratory study, we attempt to understand how seeing oneself and one’s peer group (e.g., social self-identification) in poster images affects target audience members’ (e.g., college students) willingness to intervene as a prosocial bystander. The posters in the social marketing campaign were displayed throughout a midsize northeastern public university campus and neighboring local businesses frequented by students. During the last week of the 4-week poster display, the university’s homepage portal featured an advertisement displaying a current model of an iPod offering undergraduate students an opportunity to win the device if they completed a community survey. We found that among students who had seen the posters, those who indicated that the scenes portrayed in the posters looked like situations that were familiar to them were significantly more likely to contemplate taking action in preventing a situation where sexual violence had the potential to occur. Furthermore, students who indicated familiarity with the poster content were more likely to indicate that they had acted in a manner similar to those portrayed in the poster. Future directions based on findings from this exploratory study are discussed.

Using a Multimedia Social Marketing Campaign to Increase Active Bystanders on the College Campus

Abstract Objective: To evaluate the campus-wide administration of the Know Your Power bystander-oriented social marketing campaign. Participants: Undergraduate students at a public college were invited to participate in a public awareness survey before and after the 6-week campaign administration in February and March 2009. Methods: Pretest and posttests were administered (N = 353) to examine if exposure to the campaign changed students’ stage of scale scores. Results: Exposure to the social marketing campaign increased participants’ awareness of their role in reducing sexual and relationship violence and stalking, increased their expressed willingness to get involved in reducing the incidence these types of violence, and resulted in participants being more likely to report having taken action to reduce these types of violence. Conclusions: As college students explore their role as community members, it is an opportunity for college educators to design and administer prevention messages highlighting behavioral norms to be explored and adopted.

An Examination of Full-Time Employment in the Direct-Care Workforce

The article provides a sociodemographic and socioeconomic portrait of individuals in the direct-care workforce. Multinomial logistic regression is used to compare socioeconomic and sociodemographic predictors of part-time and full-time employment in the direct-care occupation and other occupations using data from the 2003 and 2004 Annual Social and Economic Surveys. The results indicate that race, limited education, and having children younger than age 6 are significant predictors of full-time employment in direct care. Full-time and part-time direct-care employees are significantly less likely to have job-related health insurance than those in other occupations. Despite the recognized needs of older Americans and the decreasing number of women available to provide such care, development of this workforce is not a policy priority. State and federal policies should provide the direct-care workforce with wages and benefits sufficient to support their families and enable them to remain in the workforce providing consistent and competent elderly care.

Bringing in the Target Audience in Bystander Social Marketing Materials for Communities: Suggestions for Practitioners

The Know Your Power TM social marketing campaign images model active bystander behaviors that target audience members can use in situations where sexual and relationship violence and stalking are occurring, have occurred, or have the potential to occur. In this practitioner note, we describe strategies that we have used to engage target audience members in the development of the social marketing campaign that we hope can be used by practitioners. We give examples from the development and evaluation of the Know Your PowerTM social marketing campaign that used focus group and other types of feedback from the target audience to inform the direction of the campaign.

Translating Sexual Assault Prevention From a College Campus to a United States Military Installation: Piloting the Know-Your-Power Bystander Social Marketing Campaign

One population that shares both similar and different characteristics with traditional college-age students is the U.S. Military. Similarities include a high concentration of 18- to 26-year-olds dealing with new found independence, peer pressure, and the presence of social norms that support violence and hypermasculinity. Sexual violence is a major public health problem in the United States, and because of the similarities in the age group of college and military populations, the problems regarding sexual violence in both constituencies have been well-documented. In the current pilot study we seek to add to both current knowledge about and promising practices of translating prevention strategies from one target audience to another. We describe how we translated, administered, and evaluated a bystander intervention social marketing campaign focused on sexual assault prevention that had been found to significantly affect attitude change on a college campus for a U.S. Army installation in Europe. In addition to demonstrating the process of translating prevention strategies across target audiences, findings from this pilot study contribute to the evaluation data on the effectiveness of sexual violence prevention strategies implemented with members of the U.S. Military. From our analysis, we see that research participants indicate that the degree to which the images resonate with them and the familiarity of the context (i.e., social self-identification) significantly effect the participants’ personal responsibility for reducing sexual assault, confidence in acting as a bystander, and reported engagement as a bystander.

Designing, implementing and evaluating a media campaign illustrating the bystander role

SUMMARY Recent research found that training men and women to understand the role of bystanders in situations where violence against women (VAW) is occurring may reduce the incidence of VAW (Moynihan & Banyard, 2004). Therefore a public awareness campaign to increase understanding of the prosocial role of bystanders in reducing VAW was developed and implemented. The current article discusses the role of media campaigns in addressing public health issues and describes the initial development, implementation, and evaluation of a media campaign focused on the bystander role in reducing the incidence of VAW. Conclusions and future directions of this exploratory project are discussed.

Bringing in the Bystander in-person prevention program to a U.S. military installation: results from a pilot study.

OBJECTIVES This pilot study describes an evaluation of the Bringing in the Bystander (BITB) in-person program conducted with United States Army Europe personnel. METHODS The sample was comprised of 394 soldiers (29% participated in and 71% had not participated in the BITB program). Data were analyzed 4V2 months after the program was presented. RESULTS Compared to the soldiers who did not participate in the program, soldiers who participated in the program were significantly more likely to report that they had engaged in one or more of the 117 behaviors, that they had helped an acquaintance or a stranger, and that they had taken action when they saw sexual assault or stalking occurring, about to occur or after it had occurred. CONCLUSIONS The results indicate that with thoughtful and appropriate modifications, the BITB in-person prevention program, initially developed for a college audience, can be transferred to a military audience.

Changing Attitudes About Being a Bystander to Violence Translating an In-Person Sexual Violence Prevention Program to a New Campus

Bystander approaches to reducing sexual violence train community members in prosocial roles to interrupt situations with risk of sexual violence and be supportive community allies after an assault. This study employs a true experimental design to evaluate the effectiveness of Bringing in the Bystander™ through 1-year post-implementation with first-year students from two universities (one rural, primarily residential; one urban, heavily commuter). We found significant change in bystander attitudes for male and female student program participants compared with the control group on both campuses, although the pattern of change depended on the combination of gender and campus.