Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance: Theory, Research, and Practice

Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance explores the theory, research, and practice of sexual assault risk reduction, resistance education, and self-defense programs for women and other vulnerable groups, including sexual minorities, individuals with disabilities, and those with histories of victimization. Following an ecosystemic perspective, the book examines individual risk and protective factors for sexual victimization, as well as peer-, family-, community- and societal-level factors that influence risk for sexual violence and inform the content of programs.

This volume brings together leading researchers and practitioners to operationalize sexual assault risk reduction approaches and highlights the rationale and need for risk reduction in the context of other sexual assault prevention efforts. The volume provides an overview of the history of this sexual assault prevention approach and addresses current controversies and questions in the field. The authors outline risk and protective factors for victimization and discuss how these factors guide risk reduction efforts. The volume also outlines the theory and effectiveness of current sexual assault risk reduction and resistance practices and addresses special populations and future directions.

• Reviews theoretical approaches to sexual assault risk reduction
• Summarizes program outcome studies
• Delineates feminist self-defense approaches
• Details what it means for prevention to be "trauma informed"
• Considers how to provide risk reduction without victim-blaming
• Confronts current controversies in the field of sexual assault risk reduction
• Details how prevention can address the role of alcohol in sexual violence
• Discusses international prevention efforts

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academic Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9780128093429

Book preview

strength.

Introduction

Lindsay M. Orchowski, Rhode Island Hospital, Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, United States

Christine A. Gidycz, Ohio University, Athens, OH, United States

Feminist activists, scholars, and practitioners have long recognized the severity and scope of sexual violence. Despite this recognition, the field has yet to disseminate rigorous and comprehensive sexual violence prevention that actually works to reduce the rates of sexual violence. The painfully slow pace of sexual violence prevention efforts begs the question: Why has the field been so slow to put forth a comprehensive response to this public health crisis?

The lack of efficacious prevention efforts may in part be due to the complexity of the problem. There are numerous intersecting factors that motivate and sustain sexual violence, and it is unlikely that any one prevention approach will be a silver bullet to address this widespread crime. Instead, effective prevention requires mobilization of a multitiered response, which engages individuals, families, organizations, and communities—and seeks to change some societal structures and systems at large. These efforts can include various types of programming, policies, and attempts to change societal inequalities.

A second possible reason for the slow pace of sexual violence prevention efforts is a failure of the field to envision and implement a truly comprehensive approach to sexual violence prevention. Schools, communities, and organizations often implement one type of program at once, rather than envisioning and implementing a synergistic set of intervention activities across individual, family, community, and societal levels of the social ecology as well as across time. However, given the scope of the problem, no one approach, implemented in isolation, is likely to be sufficient. For example, currently many college campuses implement bystander education approaches to sexual assault prevention that aim to engage all members of a community in taking steps to address risk of violence when they see it. Prior to bystander approaches, it was common for workshops to be conducted to engage boys and men as allies in violence prevention. However, before either of these prevention approaches emerged, the earliest violence prevention approaches were sexual assault risk reduction and resistance education programs developed by women for women. With the observation that men were taking little initiative to change societal norms to reduce violence against women, these workshops were conducted with the goal of arming women to fight back against potential attackers.

Notably, resistance education programs are currently the only type of programming effort that demonstrates long-term efficacy in reducing rates of sexual assault. Thus, we believe women’s programs need to be part of any comprehensive plan to address sexual violence in our society. However, despite evidence of their effectiveness, such programs lack widespread and systematic dissemination. There continue to exist patriarchal attitudes that are embedded in our society that support the notion that women are weak and need protection, most often from men. Thus, we believe that such programming is critical to counteract such stereotypical and outdated notions. Further, by empowering women to fight back, these efforts lead to fundamental positive changes in how women view themselves and have the potential to change societal norms and attitudes.

Criticisms of risk reduction and resistance education programs center on the notion that resistance is not always possible or successful, and thus, if women participate in such programs and are subsequently assaulted, the program would foster victim blame. However, we believe firmly that in no circumstance is anyone responsible for preventing her own assault, and effective programs explicitly address issues related to victim and perpetrator blame in the program content. Blame for sexual violence rests strictly with the perpetrator. Importantly, existing research on sexual assault risk reduction programs suggests that individuals who experience sexual victimization after participating in a resistance education program emerge with lower rates of self-blame than those who do not participate, suggesting that these programs do not have such iatrogenic effects on participants.

This volume represents the first text explicitly dedicated to the theory, practice, and research of sexual assault risk reduction programs. Sexual assault risk reduction programs include a range of predominantly individual- level interventions aimed at increasing an individual’s ability to recognize risk factors for sexual assault and effectively resist against potential attackers. Modern sexual assault risk reduction and resistance education programs are grounded in feminist advocacy efforts and informed by nearly 40 years of research examining risk factors for sexual assault. Historically programs have been termed risk reduction or resistance programs instead of prevention programs, in order to acknowledge that only perpetrators can truly prevent sexual assault and to underscore that it is not victims’ responsibility to prevent an act of aggression against them. However, our thinking on this matter continues to evolve, and we agree with individuals like Dr. Jocelyn Hollander, who argue that such programming can actually be conceptualized as primary prevention because it teaches a variety of skills such as increased awareness, avoidance, de-escalation, and verbal techniques that can actually deter an assault before it happens. At the same time, when women forcefully defend themselves against aggressive men, it is logical to assume that perpetrators might change their subsequent behaviors as they experience costs associated with their aggressive behavior—ultimately addressing the root causes of violence. Thus, when orchestrated amidst other forms of violence prevention—that concomitantly target perpetrators, enact firm institutional policies, and address structural and community-level factors that promote violence against women—sexual assault risk reduction programs can be seen as one important component of comprehensive violence prevention. We believe that resistance education programs fill an important gap within a comprehensive prevention approach as we want all individuals who are vulnerable to sexual violation to be prepared to fight.

The framework currently guiding the majority of risk reduction programs is the AAA strategy for reducing risk of victimization. This includes (1) Assessing whether a social or dating experience is potentially dangerous; (2) Acknowledging and labeling that a situation is potentially threatening when it is so; and (3) Assertively and forcefully taking action via increasingly more assertive verbal and physical resistance strategies. The field has Dr. Patricia Rozee and Dr. Mary Koss to thank for this framework that has laid the foundation for much of the published programming efforts over the past 20 years. Drawing upon a large body of research documenting the effectiveness of assertive resistance strategies against rape, self-defense programs are often administered in tandem with psychoeducational programs to provide women with specific practice in resistance techniques.

The chapters in this book will outline fundamental concepts of sexual assault risk reduction efforts. The first section explores the foundations of sexual assault risk reduction, with attention to recent evidence from current evaluations of promising programs. In Chapter 1, Christine Gidycz describes the history of sexual assault risk reduction efforts, with a particular focus on the evolution of these programs, current controversies, and questions facing the field. When conducting risk reduction programs, facilitators often recognize that there are likely to be survivors in the audience. As such, a central component to risk reduction and resistance education work is ensuring that the content does not have any unintended iatrogenic effects on participants. Toward this end, in Chapter 2, Anne DePrince and Kerry Gagnon provide an overview of what it means for interventions to be trauma informed.

The second section of the book focuses on risk and protective factors for victimization and how these factors guide risk reduction efforts. In Chapter 3, Katie Edwards and Stephanie Sessarego describe how risks for sexual violence occur across the individual, interpersonal, community, and societal levels of the ecosystem. The status of the evidence for factors that influence risk perception for sexual violence is explored by Kristen Vitek, Gabriela Lopez, Ryan Ross, Elizabeth Yeater, and Jenny Rinehart in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5, Jeannette Norris, Tina Zawacki, Kelly Cue Davis, and William George describe how psychological barriers to resistance influence women’s ability to assess situations for risk and to take quick, protective action. This chapter is followed by Christina Dardis, Sarah Ullman, and Leanne Brecklin’s overview of the state of the evidence surrounding resisting rape, delineated in Chapter 6. Next, in Chapter 7, Maria Testa and Jennifer Livingston discuss the extensive body of literature that documents intersections between alcohol use and sexual assault. In this chapter, the authors tackle the difficult question of how programs can address the role of alcohol as a risk factor for victimization, while always holding perpetrators fully accountable for their actions. Overall, these chapters provide a sound empirical base for guiding the content of risk reduction interventions.

The third section of the book outlines theory and research on the effectiveness of current sexual assault risk reduction and resistance practices. The first three chapters in this section provide valuable information that can be incorporated into programs for women. More specifically, to ensure that program developers are aware of common treatments for survivors, Amanda Gilmore, Hollie Granato, Tracy Simpson, Hanna Pinsky, Lindsay Orchowski, and Heidi Resnick discuss current approaches for addressing the aftermath of sexual violence in Chapter 8. Within sexual assault risk reduction programs, facilitators communicate that recovery is possible from sexual violence and that help is available. Given that sexual assault disclosure is met by a host of negative social reactions from support providers, in Chapter 9 Amy Saling Untied, Lindsay Orchowski, and Katherine Bogen envision what it would look like to consider preventing the second assault by better training support providers to provide positive reactions to survivors who disclose. In Chapter 10, Jocelyn Hollander delineates the foundations of empowerment self-defense and the history of this approach to resisting rape. Following these three chapters, the remaining chapters in this section address issues related to the effectiveness of programming efforts. In Chapter 11, Charlene Senn, Jocelyn Hollander, and Christine Gidycz outline similarities and differences between the three most extensively researched sexual assault risk reduction and resistance education approaches, and summarize the outcome data. In Chapter 12, Caroline Kuo, Catherine Mathews, and Naeemah Abrahams review global approaches to preventing sexual violence. The authors pay specific attention to programs that have received rigorous evaluation and show promising results for reducing rates of violence. Chapter 13 concludes the section focused on specific program approaches. Here, Terri Messman-Moore and Amy McConnell describe the state of evidence supporting sexual assault risk reduction programs for women with a history of sexual victimization. Women with a history of sexual assault are at alarmingly high risk of sexual revictimization. As the authors discuss, there is evidence that existing programs may be differentially effective for participants as a function of their victimization history.

The last section of the book addresses special populations and future directions. In Chapter 14, Heather McCauley, Robert Coulter, Katherine Bogen, and Emily Rothman document how sexual and gender minorities are at particularly high risk of sexual violence. Although risk reduction interventions specifically tailored for this population are lacking, there is also no reason to believe that resistance tactics taught within existing self-defense curriculums would not be equally effective for lesbian and bisexual women. In Chapter 15, Meg Stone describes existing approaches to reducing sexual violence among individuals with disabilities. Although the bulk of evaluated interventions are geared toward individuals with developmental and intellectual disabilities, in this chapter, Stone also describes how existing curricula can be tailored to address the ways in which physical disabilities exacerbate risk of violence. Given that abuse against individuals with disabilities is often perpetrated by caregivers, this chapter also provides a case study of an organizational change strategy designed to undermine the norms that can sustain violence within community agencies. In Chapter 16, Kelly Cue Davis, Elizabeth Neilson, Rhiana Wegner, Cynthia Stappenbeck, William George, and Jeanette Norris discuss the influence of sexual violence on sexual health and explore ways that interventions that address empowerment in sexual health may also empower women to fight back against perpetrators of sexual violence. In Chapter 17—the final chapter of the volume—Lindsay Orchowski, Miryam Yusufov, Daniel Oesterle, and Grisel García provide an overview of the core components of program evaluation and how they apply to advancing the science of sexual assault risk reduction programs.

Taken together, we hope that this volume serves as a current compendium of the state of sexual assault risk reduction and helps to advance our progress toward more comprehensive sexual assault prevention approaches worldwide. We take this opportunity to thank each of the contributors to this volume for his or her thoughtful contributions, commitment to violence prevention, and partnership in producing this work. We are inspired by your passion for making this world one where everyone is safe from harm. We are also moved by the courage of survivors who have spoken out about their experience. Your efforts to break the silence regarding sexual assault help other survivors to know that they are not alone and help to raise public awareness about this pervasive problem. The advancement of prevention science would also not be possible without the generosity of volunteers who participated in the research that informed this volume. Finally, we express our gratitude to the practitioners who work to teach empowerment self-defense and risk reduction to vulnerable populations across the globe. Together, we are all working to foster a world without violence.

Section 1

Fundamental Concepts of Sexual Assault Risk Reduction

Chapter 1

Sexual Assault Risk Reduction: Current State and Historical Underpinnings

Christine A. Gidycz    Ohio University, Athens, OH, United States

Abstract

This chapter provides a brief overview of the history of women’s programs designed to reduce sexual victimization with an emphasis on evidenced-based programming. Despite accumulating evidence for the effectiveness of women’s programming to reduce sexual assault, there are barriers to its widespread implementation, which are also discussed in the chapter. Finally, suggestions for future work, including the importance of coordinated efforts to reduce sexual assault, are discussed.

Keywords

Sexual victimization; Empowerment self-defense; Women’s sexual assault prevention programs

…sexual assault prevention programming remains a confused, scattered, and sporadic enterprise with little scientific underpinning. McCall (1993, p. 277)

The current state of rape prevention programming adds little to our knowledge about prevention. Schewe and O’Donohue (1993, p. 668)

The above quotes accurately reflect the state of sexual assault prevention programming from almost three decades ago. Programming that either targeted women or included them in prevention efforts was really in its infancy. Consistent with the sentiments of Schewe and O’Donohue (1993) and McCall (1993), efforts to address the victimization of women were not particularly well thought out, nor was their evidence to support their effectiveness. Early efforts to target women were problematic at least partially because a sound empirical and theoretical base that would provide suggestions for program content was lacking. At the same time, our culture was permeated by rape myths that suggested that women were responsible for their own victimization experiences and that if society could change women’s behaviors, rates of victimization would decrease. However, over the past 30 years, although rape myths still permeate our society (e.g., Edwards, Turchik, Dardis, Reynolds, & Gidycz, 2011), there have been significant developments within the field that have created a database to draw upon for evidence-based women’s program content and consequently increasing evidence to support the effectiveness of such efforts.

In this chapter, the author provides a brief overview of the history of programming efforts with women and highlights both significant developments in this area and demonstrated successes. She draws upon some key empirical findings as well as important theoretical developments. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for future work.

Early Programming Issues

There have been a variety of approaches utilized that have targeted women in order to prevent sexual victimization. Traditionally, self-defense courses (many offered by police departments) have been taught, and such courses typically emphasized physical defense primarily against strangers. As discussed in Rozee and Koss (2001), police publications have also traditionally focused on publicizing strategies such as avoiding dark alleys or parking in well-lit places. Rozee and Koss (2001), however, argued that teaching such precautionary measures is not particularly useful because these are strategies that women already engage in to try to prevent stranger assaults and most assaults are, in fact, committed by people who the victims know. Further, as outlined in the chapter by Jocelyn Hollander in this volume, as well as others (e.g., Rozee & Koss, 2001), other efforts to target women were rooted in the feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Empowerment self-defense programs were an outgrowth of such efforts, and they possess distinct characteristics including placing violence in a social context as well as a focus on the empowerment of women, rather than in any way trying to restrict their freedom. In such programs, women are also provided with a toolbox to use to respond to a range of aggressive acts, and the blame for assaults is placed on the perpetrators. In fact, explicit efforts are geared toward reducing victim blame.

Furthermore, likely at least partially in response to Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski’s (1987) landmark study on college campuses, where high rates of sexual victimization were reported by women as well as high rates of sexual perpetration by men, those working on college campuses also began to design and evaluate prevention programs. Koss et al.’s (1987) study, as well as other subsequent studies, had some key findings that likely influenced the content of subsequent programming. For example, across studies it was found that the vast majority of women who were victimized were assaulted by people who were known to them. Additionally, characteristics of the assaults differed in some important ways from typical stranger assaults; for example, acquaintance assaults were generally less violent, occurred often when the victim, perpetrator, or both were drinking, and multiple victimizations were more the rule than the exception (e.g., Koss, Dinero, & Seibel, 1988; Koss et al., 1987). Such assaults also often occurred in the context of social situations such as parties or at bars and on dates (Abbey, Ross, McDuffie, & McAuslan, 1996). These findings were important for subsequent work on college campuses, which includes both mixed-sex programming and programming specifically targeting women.

Mixed-Sex Audiences

Beginning in the 1990s, there was a proliferation of program evaluation studies that assessed sexual assault prevention programs for mixed-sex audiences (see Orchowski, Gidycz, & Murphy, 2010 for a review). Thus, most typically, facilitators attempted to meet the needs of women through such conjoint programming. Although not necessarily explicitly noted, at least part of the rationale for offering joint programming is that there was a belief that sexual victimization resulted at least in some instances from sexual miscommunication and societal double standards for men and women (e.g., Muehlenhard & Hollabaugh, 1988). At the same time, the author believes that researchers and educators simply really did not have a well-thought-out plan for intervention, and thus, such joint programming reflected the shotgun approach to prevention that had been discussed by others at the time (Schewe & O’Donohue, 1993). Universities also traditionally have invested limited resources in sexual assault prevention, and such an approach was also more economical. Given that sexual assault research that sought to identify risk factors and correlates of sexual assault was still in its infancy, such disorganized (but at times well-meaning) approaches are also somewhat understandable. In short, such programs were brief, psychoeducational, atheoretical, and generally inconsistent with what we know about the key components of effective prevention (Nation et al., 2003). Given this, it is also not surprising that a number of reviews concluded that such programs were of limited effectiveness in terms of changing attitudes over the long term, and with a few exceptions (Gidycz et al., 2001), researchers did not even attempt to assess whether such programs decreased the rates of victimization or perpetration.

In addition to the empirical evidence suggesting that joint programs were generally ineffective, there were also some philosophical problems about including women in joint programming efforts (Gidycz, Rich, & Marioni, 2002). Such program content had the potential to benefit one sex over the other, was challenging to deliver due to different goals for men and women, and had the potential to be ethically problematic. For example, was it appropriate to teach women skills to reduce a perpetrator’s attack in the presence of potential perpetrators? These challenges, coupled with the general lack of efficacy for joint programming efforts, provided some of the impetus for a renewed focus on women’s programs. At the same time, further impetus for women’s programming was provided by an evolving research and theoretical literature that served to inform the content of such programs.

Women’s Programming Efforts

1990–2000

Although there were studies in the 1970s and 1980s that sought to evaluate programming for women (e.g., White & Nichols, 1981), more rigorous evaluation studies began in the 1990s. Given that the research literature addressing risk factors and correlates of victimization was still somewhat underdeveloped, it is not surprising that early programming efforts were still rather brief and somewhat atheoretical with findings that were inconsistent. For example, Hanson and Gidycz (1993) created a brief, one-hour-long psychoeducational program for women that demonstrated participants in the program without a history of victimization were less likely to be victimized following the program than women in the control group without a history of victimization. However, for those women with a victimization history, the program was ineffective. A follow-up investigation, however, that evaluated a modified version of the program in an attempt to increase its effectiveness for women with histories of victimization found that the program was ineffective in reducing the risk of victimization of women with and without histories of victimization. Following this (as reviewed in more detail in the chapter by Senn, Hollander, & Gidycz), the researchers began to add to the existing psychoeducational programs a feminist self-defense component, and the results were promising across a number of domains. Such programs have most typically been labeled risk reduction programs or sexual assault resistance programs.

2000–Present

As discussed in a number of chapters within this volume (Senn, Hollander, & Gidycz; Hollander; Messman-Moore & McConnell), the research over the past 20 years has provided evidence for the effectiveness of programming for women across various domains. The vast majority of programs where effectiveness has been demonstrated include a feminist or empowerment self-defense program. A number of positive benefits to programming have been documented including increases in (a) feelings of self-efficacy to avoid an assault (e.g., Gidycz et al., 2015; Hollander, 2014; Senn, Gee, & Thake, 2011); (b) the likelihood that women will engage in a range of active resistance tactics (e.g., Hollander, 2014; Orchowski, Gidycz, & Raffle, 2008; Senn et al., 2011); (c) assertive communication (Gidycz et al., 2015; Hollander, 2014); and (d) the use of self-protective strategies (Gidycz et al., 2015; Orchowski et al., 2008). Further, such programming has also been found to decrease feelings of self-blame in those who are victimized following the program (e.g., Gidycz et al., 2015) and rates of sexual victimization (e.g., Hollander, 2014; Orchowski et al., 2008; Senn et al., 2015).

It is thus clear that over a relatively brief period of time, researchers who have been involved in women’s programming have helped to bring order to the state of confusion that was described about the prevention area by McCall (1993) 25 years ago. In short, the field has witnessed the development of programming for women that is based on sound empirical research and theoretical developments. Some key work that laid the foundation for the programming successes that have been found include the theoretical work by Nurius and Norris (1996). Their cognitive ecological model of women’s resistance to male aggression (described more fully in the chapter by Norris, Zawacki, Davis, and George) provided key theorizing that led developers of women’s programming to really address the unique needs of the vast majority of women who are assaulted by acquaintances. This model highlights the psychological barriers to resistance that a woman encounters when faced with a potential assault by an acquaintance. Programs that have demonstrated success typically teach women strategies to both identify and overcome such barriers. Furthermore, work by Ullman (2007) and others (Guerett & Santana, 2010) (described in detail in the chapter by Dardis, Ullman, & Brecklin) underscores that active physical and verbal resistance is more likely to lead to rape avoidance than passive resistance and no more likely to lead to physical injury. Empowerment self-defense programs seem to be a critical component of such programming and teach women a range of active resistance strategies that are specifically designed to capitalize on the unique bodily strengths that women possess. Finally, a key paper by Rozee and Koss (2001) detailed a framework, the AAA (assess, acknowledge, and act) model, that has been incorporated into effective risk reduction programming efforts. Within this model, women are taught to assess situations for risk, acknowledge when they are risky, and then progress through a hierarchy of assertive responses to the threat. As such, an emphasis of effective risk reduction programs is to teach women a range of skills that they can use to respond to threats rather than to tell them what to do or restrict their freedom in any way.

Given its strong empirical and theoretical base, it is not surprising that we are at a point in women’s programming efforts where to not include women’s programs as part of comprehensive prevention seems particularly problematic and not consistent with best practices. However, there remain some issues that need to be addressed to begin to ensure the widespread adoption of evidenced-based sexual assault programming for women in the future.

Future Directions

The Need to Overcome Barriers to Women’s Programming

There remain a number of existing barriers that have likely precluded the widespread adoption of women’s programming. Some key ones include the fear that women’s programming is inherently victim blaming. A key expressed concern is that not all women who participate in a program are going to be able to avoid a subsequent rape, and for those who are assaulted following the program, they might be likely to blame themselves and feel like they did not appropriately utilize the skills that they were taught. As suggested by Hollander (2009) this is a flawed argument and assumes that women are not smart enough to understand that perpetrators are always responsible for violence independent of a victim’s behavior. In fact, researchers who have sought to measure self-blame in program participants who are assaulted after participation find that they exhibit either the same amount of self-blame as the control group participants who are assaulted during the same time frame (Orchowski et al., 2008) or most often less self-blame (Gidycz et al., 2015). Thus, the fears about women’s programming being inherently victim blaming seem to be more based on patriarchal attitudes embedded in our society rather than on empirical data.

A related notion is that it is really men’s responsibility to stop rape and that true prevention only comes from targeting perpetrators and getting at the root causes of rape. Whereas comprehensive efforts need to target potential perpetrators as well as bystanders, women’s programming needs to be a key part of comprehensive prevention efforts as it is inaccurate to suggest that it does not lead to cultural change. As argued by Hollander (2016), self-defense training when appropriately done does actually get at the root causes of violence. More specifically, Hollander argues that self-defense training changes the way that women interact with others, such that, following programming, women report that they interact more comfortably and assertively with others, value their own feelings, and assert their rights to be safe and respected. Thus, although it has been argued that the potential perpetrators will likely just move on to another potential victim, if a woman responds assertively, assailants who encounter women who are trained to resist also are potentially likely to change their behaviors. These interactions when they occur over time are indeed likely to influence our culture and norms and get at the root causes of violence. Thus, the author agrees with Hollander who noted that to imply that women’s programs have no role in prevention sells short the programs that have been evaluated (Hollander, 2016). It is encouraging that the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act Program developed by Senn et al. (2015) is listed in a recent publication by the CDC that highlights effective approaches to prevent sexual violence (Basile et al., 2016).

The Need for Comprehensive Programming

As suggested in this chapter, data are accumulating that suggest women’s programming has many positive benefits, including evidence that when such programming includes feminist self-defense programming, it leads to reductions in rates of victimization (Hollander, 2014; Senn et al., 2015). At the same time, evidence also suggests that other programming efforts, in particular bystander intervention programming, have demonstrated some positive effects as well (e.g., Moynihan et al., 2015). However, as suggested by others (e.g., Banyard, 2013), we are at a point where it is critical that universities move beyond trying to identify an effective program but rather develop interconnected plans for violence prevention. Sexual violence is a complex problem that cannot realistically be expected to be eradicated with one program. We need to begin to think of women’s programming as a key piece of the prevention puzzle, and the next generation of research will need to both better identify comprehensive plans and strategies for prevention and evaluate their effectiveness. It is my belief that programs that teach women the skills to identify risk, and to use a range of strategies to address such risk, need to be a key part of any comprehensive plan. To leave such programming out of the equation is not consistent with best practices or ethically appropriate.

The Measurement of Success

Twenty-five years ago when the field of sexual assault prevention was still in its infancy, Schewe and O’Donohue (1993) stated that accurately measuring reductions in the incidence or rape is a monumental, long-term, and possibly unattainable goal (p. 672). Whereas it is understandable how it may have seemed like an insurmountable goal at the time, the developers and evaluators of women’s programs have been able to successfully demonstrate effectiveness in terms of actual reductions in the incidence of rape. Researchers in this area have often used the Sexual Experiences Survey (Koss et al., 2007; Koss & Oros, 1982), which operationalizes a range of sexually aggressive experiences, including rape. In addition, women’s programs as discussed earlier have also demonstrated a host of other positive outcomes, including the fact that the program participants have reported that they are more likely to utilize the active resistance strategies that have been taught. Even in instances where such strategies do not lead to rape avoidance, these are positive outcomes as researchers have demonstrated that the use of such strategies is associated with better psychological outcomes for victims (Ullman & Brecklin, 2003).

Future research needs to continue to expand upon these positive outcomes and consider other ways that success can be measured. One could argue that it is challenging to demonstrate the outcomes related to the rates of sexual victimization as programs educate women about what constitutes sexual assault, leading to increased awareness of the components of sexual aggression. If awareness is increased in the program groups, without also increasing it in the comparison groups, this increased awareness might confound findings and make it more difficult to demonstrate the positive outcomes related to the rates of victimization. Further, it is important to measure instances where a woman has actually used the skills that were taught to avoid an assault. Senn et al. (2011), for example, measured close calls in their investigation of their program as they suggested that such experiences would not necessarily be captured in women’s responses to the Sexual Experiences Survey. These close call experiences were operationalized as instances where a woman believed that she had avoided an assault because of her own actions, which could possibly be reflective of the skills that are being taught in such programs. In the study by Senn et al. (2011), the researchers did, in fact, find a greater number of close calls in the program group compared with their control group.

Relatedly, given the positive outcomes that have been found for women’s programs, in addition to thinking more broadly about how to measure success, researchers also need to begin to assess the key components of successful interventions. Across studies (and as discussed in the chapter by Senn, Hollander, & Gidycz), it appears that some of the necessary components include an empowerment self-defense component, a discussion of psychological barriers to resistance, and an opportunity to practice a range of skills to thwart an assault. However, to date, no dismantling study has been conducted that actually demonstrates the active ingredients of these interventions.

Target Audiences

Currently, the vast majority of this research has been conducted with college students, who are the ideal audience in many ways given the high rates of victimization in this group. However, since many young women enter college already having been victimized (Krebs, Lindquist, Warner, Fisher, & Martin, 2009), it is imperative that such programming begin before the college years. Some recent examples include a small pilot investigation that targeted adolescent girls (Rowe, Jouriles, & McDonald, 2015). In this study, Rowe et al. (2015) investigated the My Voice, My Choice program that teaches girls assertive resistance skills and provides them feedback on the use of such skills and opportunities to practice in a virtual environment. Results with a small pilot sample suggested that the rates of sexual and psychological victimization were lower at the 3-month follow-up for the intervention group compared with the wait-list control group. Other researchers have also targeted adolescent girls in Nairobi and found significant reductions over a 10-month follow-up period in rates of sexual victimization for those girls who participated in six 2-hour sessions that included an empowerment and self-defense intervention (Sarnquist et al., 2014). Sarnquist et al. reported that significant reductions in rates of sexual victimization were not evidenced in the comparison group, which consisted of a life skills class. DePrince, Chu, Labus, Shirk, and Potter (2015) have specifically targeted child welfare–involved girls with a history of sexual victimization. Their results suggested that those girls who either had the Social Learning/Feminist Intervention that focused on concepts derived from social learning and feminist models of risk (e.g., sexism and beliefs about relationships) or the Risk Detection/Executive Functioning Intervention that addressed the development of specific executive function abilities to help participants detect and respond to risk were less likely to be revictimized compared with a no-treatment comparison group.

All of these studies (some reviewed in more detail in other chapters in this book) suggest that many of the positive outcomes that women’s programming has evidenced with college students are beginning to be demonstrated with younger groups of girls. Such findings further underscore both the critical importance of targeting young girls and continuing research to modify programs that have been primarily developed for adults so that they can be implemented with this population.

Summary and Conclusions

Over the past 30 years, the field of sexual assault prevention has shown some key developments, with evidence accumulating that women’s programs, particularly when they focus on self-defense skills as well as help women identify and overcome barriers to respond to risk, have been found to be effective. Such programs are actually among a very small group of programs that have demonstrated actual reductions in sexual victimization. Despite this, barriers to widespread implementation of such programs still exist, including fears that they are victim blaming or beliefs that it is men’s responsibility to respond to risk, or such programming does not really constitute prevention. In this book, however, numerous authors make it clear that it is possible to target women without being victim blaming, and in fact, to not teach women skills that have now been shown to decrease women’s risk of victimization is potentially unethical and certainly not well informed. Whereas the author believes that programs that target potential perpetrators as well as bystanders are also needed and should be a part of systematic efforts to reduce sexual assault, women’s programs (which have primarily been developed by women for women) within the field have been ignored and unfairly criticized for far too long. In order for the field of sexual assault prevention to continue to move forward, it is critical that evidence-based programs, like the ones that are reviewed and discussed in this chapter and throughout this book, be a key part of efforts to bring about systematic change with concomitant reductions in sexual assault.

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