Date of Award

8-2019

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Counseling Psychology & Community Services

First Advisor

Ashley Hutchinson

Abstract

The development of effective sexual violence prevention programming has been an effort spanning several decades, while prevalence of such violence remains high. The present study describes the development and evaluation of a violence prevention program (Relationships, Sexuality, and Violence Prevention: RSVP) for women that draws from other types of interventions, and is grounded in Social Cognitive Theory and current research-generated recommendations.

The evaluation of the program measured change between treatment and control group college women on a number of relevant factors: (a) rape myth acceptance, (b) sexual double standards, (c) positive sexual self-understanding, (d) sexual communication, (e) sexual consent understanding, (f) willingness to intervene against sexual aggression, and (g) self-defense self-efficacy. A series of one-way ANOVAs showed a significant decrease of rape myth acceptance, F(1, 150) = 30.3, p = .00, η2p = .20, and increase of self-defense self-efficacy, F(1, 145) = 31.5, p = .00, η2p = .16, for college women who participated in RSVP. Both of these outcomes are well-established as important protective factors associated with sexual violence prevention.

These results represent important contributions in the ongoing effort to establish the effectiveness of the RSVP program. Implications for future research include continuing to emphasize self-efficacy, agency, and empowerment across the program content, and to reflect planned behavioral change and incidence of sexual violence more accurately in longitudinal analyses.

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