Bystander Program Adoption & Efficacy to Reduce SV-IPV in College Community

U01 Growing Communities of Researchers and Colleges for Primary VAW Prevention Because the 2013 Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act1 (SaVE) now requires bystander training for all publicly funded colleges and universities (hereafter colleges), a “natural experiment” presents itself as the opportunity to determine relative bystander training efficacy across multiple colleges. While SaVE requires public colleges to implement bystander interventions, evaluations of programs not required and few programs have been rigorously evaluated for efficacy to reduce violence. Goal 1. Grow Colleges as Communities for Primary Prevention of Violence Against Women Research. As this U01 call (RFA-CE-15-003) requests, we propose a quasi-experimental design using propensity-score matching of multiple colleges to evaluate the relative efficacy of bystander interventions components (BIC) to reduce violence against women (VAW: operationally defined as intimate partner violence (IPV) and sexual violence (SV)) on college campuses. We seek to evaluate bystander interventions as promising primary prevention strategies for VAW and the relevative efficacy for Green Dot, specifically. Aim 1. Determine the efficacy of bystander interventions components (BIC) to 1) increase bystander efficacy and behaviors, 2) reduce violence acceptance, 3) reduce violence victimization and perpetration, and 4) increase program cost effectiveness among college communities implementing Green Dot (or other skills-based bystander intervention training) relative to online bystander training alone. Data to measure program efficacy for outcomes will be obtained from student surveys, campus crime data, and surveys with college staff and administrators responsible for selecting and implementing bystander interventions. Based on our randomized intervention trial with 26 Kentucky high school5, at least 3-4 years were required from bystander implementation until signs of violence reduction become evident and consistently measurable. We will therefore collect data at each college for the full 4 years of the U01 (academic years 2015-2019). To evaluate initial equivalence by BIC (propensity-matching), respondent and college-level sociodemographic or risk attributes and baseline violence rates will be compared. The effects of BIC over time, and the BIC-time interaction on outcomes including violence rates (per student, averaged at the college level) will be examined using linear mixed models (PROC GLIMMIX with an AR(1) R matrix and bias-corrected empirical standard error estimates). VAW researchers are quite mutli-disciplinary yet few training programs support this diverse field of highly relevant applied research. Goal 2. Grow Communities of Violence Against Women Prevention Researchers. This natural experiment is also a unique opportunity for more senior VAW prevention researchers to share their expertise and experience with each other AND to share that knowledge with more junior researchers. In this way we can grow the next generation of VAW prevention researchers. Team science is increasingly required in biomedical sciences. As researchers from multiple colleges are engaged with college recruitment, survey design, data collection, and data analyses, researcher communities will form. Aim 2. Determine the efficacy of this U01 program to increase VAW prevention research productivity defined as 1) individual and collaborative manuscript submissions and peer-reviewed journal publications and 2) grant submissions, scored reviews, and funded proposals. Both senior (n=10 including CDC collaborators) and junior researchers (n=26) will be included in this prospective assessment. Measurement will be both qualitative and quantitative and measured at baseline and across the 4-year U01. The research opportunity provided by SaVE’s policy intervention has important implications for both college and researcher communities. College administrators, students and their parents have a significant stake in identifying and implementing bystander interventions that are most effective in reducing VAW and doing so in the most cost and time efficient manner. This research seeks to determine the promise of bystander interventions for college communities as mandated by SaVE and provide capacity to grow and support VAW researchers into the future.