Theoretical Mediators of RealConsent: A Web-Based Sexual Violence Prevention and Bystander Education Program

This study examined the process by which a web-based sexual violence (SV) prevention program (i.e., RealConsent) prevents SV perpetration and increases bystander behaviors. Data from 743 college men who participated in a randomized controlled trial were analyzed. Simple and multiple-mediation models were estimated, using several theoretical constructs to assess the mechanisms through which RealConsent produced significant effects on SV perpetration and prosocial bystander or intervening behaviors. The results indicated that knowledge of effective consent for sex, hostility toward women, date rape attitudes, and hyper-gender male ideology significantly mediated the effects of RealConsent on SV perpetration in the multiple-mediator model. Furthermore, intentions to intervene significantly mediated the effects of RealConsent on prosocial bystander behaviors in the multiple-mediator model. The results show that the RealConsent program works to prevent SV perpetration and prosocial bystander behaviors via several theoretically proposed mediators central to the development and content of the program. The results also provide strong evidence that SV and bystander education for college men may benefit from including an explicit focus on decreasing negative norms related to women (e.g., hostility, date rape attitudes, hyper-gender ideology) and through increasing college men’s knowledge of consent and intentions to intervene.

Rape Myths Among Appalachian College Students

Rape myths regularly admonish victims for supposedly provoking the violence done against them. While rape attitudes have been studied in national and urban samples, the support of rape myths in rural populations is seldom investigated. Furthermore, the few empirical studies on sexual coercion in Appalachia are mostly descriptive and rarely compare the sentiments of Appalachians and non-Appalachians. To address this gap, this study surveyed 512 college students at a public university in Eastern Kentucky. In testing an Appalachian distinctiveness question, this study revealed that Appalachian students were less likely to criticize rape victims. Students were also less inclined to condemn rape victims when they were victims themselves, came from egalitarian families, stayed in college longer, rejected modern sexism, and felt little animosity toward women.

Sexual Assault Education Programs: A Meta-Analytic Examination of Their Effectiveness

Meta-analyses of the effectiveness of college sexual assault education programs on seven outcome measure categories were conducted using 69 studies that involved 102 treatment interventions and 18,172 participants. Five of the outcome categories had significant average effect sizes (i.e., rape attitudes, rape-related attitudes, rape knowledge, behavioral intent, and incidence of sexual assault), while the outcome areas of rape empathy and rape awareness behaviors did not have average effect sizes that differed from zero. A significant finding of this study is that longer interventions are more effective than brief interventions in altering both rape attitudes and rape-related attitudes. Moderator analyses also suggest that the content of programming, type of presenter, gender of the audience, and type of audience may also be associated with greater program effectiveness. Implications for research and practice are discussed.