Preventing sexual violence in sport: the determinants of positive coach-bystanding behavior

Coaches are instrumental in creating safe sport environments, especially in preventing sexual violence, but little is known about helpful bystander behaviors, hampering effective prevention programs. To identify determining characteristics of positive bystander behavior, 1442 Belgian youth-sport coaches completed a dedicated online questionnaire on bystander-related attitudes, descriptive and injunctive norms, autonomy beliefs, and self-efficacy using two hypothetical sport-associated sexual-violence scenarios. Potential for change was analyzed using confidence interval-based estimation of relevance (CIBER). 127 coaches (9.6%) had witnessed sexual violence over the past year. Most had intervened (single incident: 3.7%; multiple incidents: 2.4%). Experiential attitude expectation, instrumental attitude evaluation, perceived referent behavior and approval, and subskill presence were positively associated with coaches’ intentions to intervene. Of the determinants of positive coach-bystander behavior, attitude and perceived norms proved key constituents for programs addressing sexual violence in youth sport. To promote (pro-)active coach-bystander behaviors, the results are discussed from a theoretical and practice-oriented perspective.

The Effect of Moral Disengagement on Bystander’s Behavior in Bullying among Middle School Students

The aim of the current study was to examine use of moral disengagement among middle school students as bystanders to bullying, as well as the links between four domains of moral disengagement and bystander’s behaviors in bullying episode, including pro-bullying, victim-defending and passive bystanding behavior. Participants included 736 adolescents from the urban area of Hanoi (Mage = 13.69; 53.1% male). According to the main hypotheses, all four domains of moral disengagement were negatively correlated with victim-defending behavior and positively correlated with passive bystanding behavior, whereas only three sets of mechanisms were found to be related to pro-bullying behavior, including minimizing one’s agentive role, consequences distortion, and victim attribution. Linear regression analyses indicated that bystander’s behaviors were predicted by minimizing one’s agentive role. Differences regarding gender and grade were also found. These results highlight the importance of particular moral disengagement sets of mechanisms and have potential implications for prevention tackling bullying.