Southside Teens About Respect- A teen dating violence prevention project

STAR: Southside Teens About Respect
Summary Report of Outcomes

The Media Campaign
In June, 1999, 25 billboards were erected in the Englewood community containing two different anti-violence messages and advertising the City of Chicago's Domestic Violence Helpline. Later, two additional messages were displayed and the billboards were moved to new locations in the community. The Englewood community experienced a 57% increase in calls to the Helpline immediately after the billboards were posted in Englewood. During the same month, the city of Chicago experienced a 14% increase in calls to the Helpline. In July, the number of calls to the Helpline from Englewood continued to increase at a rapid rate, and then leveled off in August. For the City of Chicago, the number of calls continued to increase at a steady rate from the baseline period in May through August 1999.

Community-Based Workshops
Data for this component of the project were collected immediately before and after the one-hour workshops. Workshops were conducted at WIC sites, homeless shelters, daycare centers, churches, a community college, recovery homes, head start centers, and other social service agencies. More than 100 workshops were presented to over 1000 community residents. Most participants in the workshops were female (90%) with an average age of 28. Forty-two percent of participants reported experiencing no intimate partner violence, 12% reported experiencing abuse as a victim only, 33% experienced reciprocal violence in relationships, and 12% reported perpetrating abuse only.
While the community workshops had clear effects on participants’ intention to seek help if they found themselves in an abusive situation, no significant differences were found in the areas of knowledge or attitudes. Given that this was a one-hour workshop presented in a community where the risk of experiencing domestic violence is rather high, increasing the likelihood of help-seeking is a meaningful and very worthwhile accomplishment. Given the initial high scores on the knowledge and attitudes questionnaires, these scales should be revised for the adult audience so they might have a better chance of documenting the effects of the intervention.

School-Based Workshops
Longitudinal data for the school-based workshops were collected at four different time periods. Time 01 data was collected prior to the beginning of the interventions in the Fall of 1998. Time 02 data was collected in the Winter/Spring of 1999 after the completion of the interventions at the participating elementary schools. Time 03 data was collected during the Winter of 1999/2000. Because of IRB problems at UIC, Time 03 data collection occurred about midway through the 10-week intervention in Year 02 of the project. Time 04 data was collected in the Spring of 2000 after the completion of the second year of intervention at the participating elementary schools.
Time 01 data was collected from a cohort of 333 7th-grade students in September and October 1998. Time 02 data was collected from 253 of those students resulting in a 24% attrition rate. Similar attrition rates existed between Time 02 and Time 03, and Time 03 and 04. Complete data are available across all four data points for 118 of these students, resulting in an overall attrition rate of 64%. This high attrition rate was expected given the mobility and attendance rates for the three participating schools. The average mobility rate for the three schools is 30% and the average daily attendance is 91%.

Of the students who participated in the pretest at Time 01, 59% were female and 41% were male. Data from the Chicago public school system indicates that Hope, Reed, and Ross elementary schools are approximately 94% African-American, 6% Hispanic, and 94% low income. Pre-intervention, 95% of students indicated that they had dated and 70% indicated that they were currently in a steady dating relationship. The average number of dating partners reported was 10 and the average length of their current relationship was seven months. Sixty percent of the students reported that they spent time alone together with their dating partner once a week or less, while 40% indicated spending time alone together almost daily. Pre-intervention, 22% of students indicated that had been the victim of physical or emotional abuse in a dating relationship and 37% indicated that they had perpetrated abuse.

Of the 118 students who had complete data for all four data points, 17 were in the Treatment group both years, 33 were in the No-Treatment control group both years, and 68 students received the intervention one of the two years. Each year, students who participated in the treatment groups showed considerable gains over students in the no-treatment control groups. Looking at the data longitudinally over two years, it appears that students receiving the intervention in two consecutive years benefitted considerably more than students who did not receive the intervention or only received the intervention one of the two years. The school-based interventions had clear effects on students? conflict behavior, self-ratings of relationship skills, and help seeking behavior. While not statistically significant, violence supportive attitudes and attitudes justifying violence in relationships also showed trends in the right direction. Knowledge was the only area where control group students improved at a similar rate to treatment groups subjects.

Recommendations for the School-Based Workshops
• The Dating Violence Test should be made more difficult, and should be modified to more closely reflect curricula-specific content.

• From the data it appears that students increase their resolve to seek help following abuse after only receiving one year of the curricula. Therefore, information on help seeking behavior could be reduced in the second year of the curricula.

• Given the findings that students receiving the intervention in two consecutive years benefitted considerably more than students who did not receive the intervention or only received the intervention one year, the program should be expanded to include three or more consecutive years.

• Given the data indicating that students are beginning to date and experience violence in their dating relationships at an early age, the intervention should probably begin at grade 4, 5, or 6.