Guidelines for Developing Rape Prevention and Risk Reduction Interventions: Lessons from Evaluation Research.
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Summary
While our knowledge of how to prevent rape is still in its infancy, the number people dedicated to eradicating rape and improving the quality rape prevention programs continues to expand. Here is a list of lessons that have been learned from the hard work of educators and researchers. With your help, this list will continue to grow. |
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- 'Rape myths’ are a common component of many successful programs.
- ‘Victim empathy’ interventions should include at least one scenario where the victim is a male.
- Few programs have targeted the negative consequences that raping holds for perpetrators, although this component appears to have great promise.
- Increasing ‘rape awareness’ should not be the only goal of your program.
- Improving communication skills is a worthy goal, but the effectiveness of attempting to teach communication skills in a rape prevention program has yet to be demonstrated.
- Teaching students to reduce their risk of being raped by avoiding high risk situations is an intervention best suited for females, and caution is needed to avoid victim blaming.
- Teaching women self-defense strategies appears to be an effective tool in helping students avoid rape.
- Presentations should be tailored to the particular audience in terms of age, race, and gender.
- Programs for younger students can focus on building healthy relationships and decreasing sexual harassment.
- Single gender audiences are preferable to mixed gender audiences.
- Local statistics will have a greater impact on your audience than national statistics.
- Programs should avoid confrontation, blaming men, or blaming victims.
- Programs should focus on increasing healthy behaviors, not just decreasing negative behaviors.
- Use several presentation methods. Get students actively involved in anti-rape activities. Consider supplementing your program with videos.
- Provide students with multiple sessions whenever possible.
- Theory based rape prevention programs are generally more effective. Try to articulate your beliefs about the causes of rape, and keep these in mind as you develop your curricula.
- You should be constantly trying to improve your curricula. Even if you are able to demonstrate initial positive effects, it is likely that these positive effects will begin to fade after a few weeks or months. By always working to increase the quality of the curricula and by increasing the number of sessions that you spend with students, you will increase the likelihood that your program will have lasting effects.
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From Schewe, P.A. (in press). Guidelines for Developing Rape Prevention and Risk Reduction Interventions: Lessons from Evaluation Research. In P. Schewe (Ed.), Preventing Violence in
Relationships: Interventions Across the Life Span. Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
The manuscript that this summary was taken from was originally prepared for the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault. Special thanks to Alan Berkowitz, John Foubert, Mary Heppner, Kim Lonsway, Hugh Potter, Stephanie Riger, and Sarah Ullman for their comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.
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