Adapting effective sexual assault prevention for online delivery Can an in-person intervention that decreases young women’s risk of sexual assault maintain its effectiveness when adapted for online facilitation? Our recent research set out to answer this question. Many people have searched for ways to prevent sexual violence against women and girls, but few strategies have been found to be effective. (1) Changing societal acceptance of gender-based violence takes time, and attitude change alone does not lead to decreases in rates of violence. Efforts to prevent sexual violence perpetration have had limited results, (2) though this work continues. Dr Charlene Senn and her team had a scientific breakthrough with CIHR funding, showing that empowering young women through resistance education can decrease their risk of sexual assault and intimate partner violence (IPV) by 50%. (3,4,5) The intervention was the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA; also known as Flip the Script with EAAA®), a 12-hour program delivered in small groups by two expert near-peers on university campuses. Implementation is resource- intensive for universities (e.g., training and staffing costs) even though the program itself is available at cost (SARE Centre). It is the only intervention that has demonstrated large, long- lasting reductions in sexual and IPV victimization. It has been used on campuses in five countries; however, the reach is still limited.
Peitzmeier et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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