Integrating Sexual Assault Resistance,Bystander,and Men’s Social Norms Strategies to Prevent Sexual Violence on College Campuses: A Call to Action

Sexual Assault Risk Reduction and Resistance Programming for College Women

There are two primary types of women’s programming. The first grew out of rape education workshops offered in the community and on college campuses beginning in the 1970s. These workshops aimed to disseminate accurate information about sexual assault and its impact on victims, reduce stereotypes and myths, share local resources, and suggest strategies for reducing the risk of rape (see Women Against Rape, 1980). The second type of programming focuses on self-defense education. These programs vary considerably in scope, but all teach concrete strategies women could use to protect themselves if assaulted. Initially, these strategies were mainly physical; today, many programs also include verbal and psychological strategies for self-defense and address assault prevention as well as resistance at the moment of assault.

Although their lineage and foci are different, both types of programs share important programmatic elements (see Figure 1) and have been influenced by each other. Both provide information about sexual assault and discussion and modeling of strategies for reducing risk and deterring threat in the context of building empowerment among women in sexual and nonsexual situations, including those where risk of sexual assault may be present. Some programs also provide extensive practice in using physical and/or verbal resistance strategies, which have been found to increase the program’s impact on self-efficacy, perceived control, and skill (see Senn, Hollander, & Gidycz, 2018). Some programs also include discussion of effective boundary-setting techniques, which is anticipated to increase assertiveness and decrease self-silencing. Many programs also include a discussion of psychological and social barriers to resistance, which is expected to decrease reaction time and increase use of resistance strategies. Ultimately, these programs aim to decrease victimization, fear, and self- or survivor blame, and facilitate survivor healing and recovery. Some programs also aim to change social norms surrounding sexual assault, which are hypothesized to lead to changes in the broader community.

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Figure 1.

Logic model: Risk reduction, resistance education and self-defense programs.

One goal of the earliest sexual assault education programs for women was to increase women’s sense that sexual assault is frequent and could happen to them. Many early programs focused on the kinds of stranger-perpetrated, blitz assaults that dominate public consciousness and media about sexual assault, although the most evidence-based programs (e.g., Morrison & Green, 1990) also addressed acquaintance assault. Some programs—which we believe are problematic—presented “dos and don’ts” about how to minimize one’s risk of being targeted: walk with a buddy at night, monitor one’s alcohol consumption, install a peephole in one’s front door, and so on. Although these tips are intended to increase women’s safety, they can have the unintended consequence of restricting women’s lives (Stanko, 1997) and do not necessarily address risk of acquaintance assault. Because of their focus on what women can do to prevent assault, they have also been criticized as implying victim responsibility for preventing assault. While these workshops might inform participants about self-defense strategies that could be used in case of attack, such as running away or yelling, they do not provide the opportunity to actively practice these skills, at least not in any depth.

At the time when these early programs and “tips” were originally developed, the knowledge base regarding acquaintance assault and how to decrease risk was quite limited. More recent sexual assault risk reduction programs have evolved significantly from these early beginnings. The Ohio University Sexual Assault Risk Reduction Program, designed by Christine Gidycz and her colleagues, is a good example of this evolution. Early iterations of the program were brief, didactic programs that attempted to impress upon participants the seriousness and personal relevance of sexual assault, challenge rape myths, identify risky situations, and target behaviors (e.g., “alcohol consumption, isolation of incident site, nonassertive behavior, and ineffective sexual communication,” Hanson & Gidycz, 1993, p. 1047), and review strategies women might use to resist assault (e.g., “attack forcefully” and “yell for help”). Over time, this program increased its emphasis on perpetrator blame, added discussions of how previous victimization may increase women’s risk of future victimization, addressed psychological barriers to resistance (Norris, Nurius, & Dimeff, 1996), added assertiveness, and problem skills training and practice, and added a self-defense skills component. Although the findings are somewhat equivocal (Gidycz et al., 2015), recent iterations of this program reduced rates of sexual victimization for some groups of women over follow-up periods ranging from 2 to 7 months (Gidycz et al., 2001; Gidycz, Rich, Orchowski, King, & Miller, 2006; Hanson & Gidycz, 1993; Orchowski, Gidycz, & Raffle, 2008). What is more, rates of self-blame among women who do experience an assault postprogram are lower compared to rates among women who have not participated but also experienced an assault.

Recent sexual assault resistance education programming has been influenced by Rozee and Koss’s (2001) article “Rape: A Century of Resistance,” which presented a model of rape resistance they termed “Assess, Acknowledge, Act.” Following Norris and colleagues’ (1996) research on psychological barriers to resistance, they argued that women must first assess a situation as potentially risky and then acknowledge that a rape is potentially underway before being able to act effectively to resist it. Charlene Senn brought this model to life, with the addition of an emancipatory sexuality education component, in her Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) ¹ sexual assault resistance curriculum (Senn, Gee, & Thake, 2011; see SARECentre.org). This 12-hr program is clear that blame and responsibility are to be attributed to perpetrators, not victims, and includes a significant physical self-defense component, comprising 25% of the content. There is ample opportunity for participants to practice the verbal, emotional, and physical skills they learn. Women who participated in the EAAA program reported significantly lower rates of sexual assault victimization compared to women who received brochures on sexual assault and an opportunity to ask questions (Senn et al., 2015). More specifically, women were 50% less likely to experience completed or attempted rape 1 year after the program compared to women in the control group. These reductions in victimization were accompanied by increased self-confidence and other positive knowledge, belief, and attitudinal effects (e.g., self-defense self-efficacy), with positive outcomes lasting for at least 2 years (Senn et al., 2017).

Women’s self-defense programming has also evolved over the past three decades. Traditional self-defense programs tend to focus almost exclusively on physical resistance to assaults by strangers. Like sexual assault education programs, they often share statistics aimed to increase women’s sense that they could be victimized, and instruct students in risk reduction “dos and don’ts,” with the goal of making them less attractive targets for attack. They differ from traditional sexual assault education programs, however, in their focus on skills (mainly physical) that women can use to resist such assaults when they happen. For example, Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) classes are currently the most common self-defense classes taught on college campuses. The RAD curriculum, which the parent organization does not permit individual instructors to modify, focuses almost exclusively on how to avoid and respond to blitz attacks by strangers. Instructors offer strategies for increasing home security and personal safety on the street or public transportation, and teach resistance techniques appropriate for violent assaults by strangers. Although there is mention that acquaintances are the most frequent perpetrators of violence against women, there is little attention paid to the emotional barriers to self-defense in such situations, nor of any nonphysical types of resistance that might forestall such assaults. To date, there have been no rigorous published evaluations of the effectiveness of these traditional self-defense programs for preventing victimization or perpetration. One nonrandomized pre- and posttest evaluation of the RAD curriculum suggested that the program increased interpersonal self-efficacy among participants, including women with a history of sexual trauma (Pinciotti & Orcutt, 2018).

Other self-defense classes, in contrast, have developed a much broader focus. Feminist empowerment self-defense (ESD) classes ² (see Hollander, 2014, 2016, 2018), for example, address a continuum of assaults against women that range from the irritating (e.g., catcalling) to the life threatening and that occur at the hands of acquaintances, intimates, and strangers. Although ESD classes present information about the prevalence of sexual assault, their aim is to increase women’s freedom, not increase their fear, and they teach a range of verbal, physical, and emotional skills for sexual assault avoidance and resistance. They arm women with skills to prevent assaults, not just respond to them, and to that end they focus on recognizing warning signs and developing skills to interrupt assaults in their very early stages through boundary setting and assertiveness, as well as on overcoming social and emotional barriers to resistance. ESD classes are notable for their sustained attention to the social factors, such as gender inequality, that facilitate violence against women. Although ESD classes are not explicitly based on the AAA model (indeed, they preceded it), they are consistent with its goals of fostering accurate assessment, rapid acknowledgement, and effective action to resist sexual assault. In a recent evaluation of a 10-week ESD program on a college campus, Hollander (2014) found that women who did not participate in the program were 1.6 times more likely to experience a sexual assault at the 1-year follow-up than demographically similar women who took the class. Although focused on adolescent rather than college-aged populations, recent evaluations of No Means No Worldwide’s ESD curriculum have similarly found large decreases in sexual assault at follow-up (Sarnquist et al., 2014; Sinclair et al., 2013).

Over time, these two types of women’s programs have become more similar. Sexual assault risk reduction programs started off as a mainly didactic way of conveying the pervasiveness and seriousness of rape and the life modifications women could undertake to reduce their risk of being victimized. Self-defense classes began as a purely physical response to assaults by strangers. The best variants of each approach have moved to being more focused on acquaintance assaults, including a range of verbal and physical resistance strategies, attending to socioemotional barriers to resistance, and placing blame squarely on perpetrators, not victims.

Sexual Assault Prevention for College Men

Although most college men are not sexually aggressive, approximately 11% of college men have committed an act of rape during adolescence and/or in university (Swartout et al., 2015). Some men are at higher risk to perpetrate sexual aggression than others (e.g., Thompson, Swartout, & Koss, 2013), with some men engaging in multiple offenses over time (e.g., Gidycz, Warkentin, & Orchowski, 2007), and others for whom contextual factors including peer relationships may be critical to their perpetration (Swartout, 2013; Swartout et al., 2015). For example, college men who accept stereotypical rape myths, hold adversarial views toward women, condone violence, or hold traditional attitudes about sex roles are more tolerant of rape, and are more likely to perpetrate sexual aggression than individuals who do not share these beliefs (Jacques-Tiura, Abbey, Parkhill, & Zawacki, 2007). These data highlight the importance of intervening with college men to prevent engagement in sexually aggressive behavior.

Although sexual violence prevention programs for men and boys are diverse in specific content, format, facilitation style, and key outcomes, all programs seek to reduce perpetration rates of sexual assault, reduce adherence to attitudes commonly associated with risk for sexual aggression, and increase proactive bystander intervention among men (see Figure 2). Prevention programs focus on engaging boys and men as allies in sexual violence prevention and may also critique the ways in which men are socialized, teach social and communication skills, or correct misperceptions of social norms (for a review, see Gidycz, Orchowski & Edwards, 2011). ³ Specifically, skills-based programs ask men to take responsibility for their interactions with others and learn skills such as communication strategies, anger management, and negotiating consent in romantic relationships (e.g., Choate, 2003; O’Donohue, Yeater, & Fantetti, 2003). Although these programs maintain a focus on men’s socialization, most programs include bystander skills training, and some also integrate social norms theory. The Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program (Katz, 1994, 1995,) represents one of the first programs for men and centers on reconstructing traditional masculine norms. The program’s initial focus was on male and female athletes; however, the program has expanded to address high school, college, and military populations (Katz, Heiserkamp, & Fleming, 2011). As MVP has yet to undergo formal testing using a rigorous experimental design, despite being implemented for over 20 years, we know very little as to whether the program has promising effects on behavior. The MVP web page notes that this program introduced the concept of bystander intervention—highlighting the overlap between programs for men and bystander intervention programs, discussed below. Similar to the MVP program, the Men’s Program (Foubert, 2000; Foubert, Godin, & Tatum, 2010; Foubert & McEwen, 1998; Foubert & Marriot, 1996, 1997; Foubert & Newberry, 2006; Foubert & Perry, 2007; Foubert, Tatum, & Donohue, 2006; Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Foubert, Brasfield, Hill, & Shelley-Tremblay, 2011) addresses men’s attitudes toward violence and shares a common focus on bystander intervention. Although The Men’s Program has been evaluated multiple times, the evaluations lack rigor to determine whether this program has any impact on reducing men’s actual perpetration behaviors (Tharp et al., 2011).

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Figure 2.

Logic model: Men’s programs. Empathy-based programs, skills-based programs, and social norms-based programs vary in the extent to which they incorporate each of the key components of men’s programming. For example, a skills-based program which also includes a social norms component (e.g., Gidycz, Orchowski, & Edwards, 2011) is the most inclusive, and incorporates all of the program components.

Social marketing approaches have also been utilized to engage men and boys as allies in violence prevention. Men Can Stop Rape is a national nonprofit organization that seeks to redefine masculinity through the Men of Strength (MOST) club for college men and the “My Strength is Not for Hurting” social marketing public awareness campaign. Despite the reach of the programming, little is known about the effectiveness of the MOST clubs or public awareness campaign, although evaluation is currently underway. Social marketing campaigns have also been applied more broadly to college campuses as a strategy for violence prevention, although efforts are not exclusively targeted toward men (e.g., Potter, 2012).

Social norms-based programs address men’s tendency to underestimate the prosocial attitudes and behaviors of other men and overestimate other men’s adherence to hypermasculine norms (Berkowitz, 2004), drawing on a multifactor theoretical model known as the Integrated Model of Sexual Assault and Acquaintance Rape (Berkowitz, 1994, 2003). For example, the Men’s Workshop (Gidycz, Orchowski, & Berkowitz, 2011) consists of a 1.5-hr prevention program and a 1-hr booster session. When implemented in first-year residence halls, the Men’s Workshop reduced self-reported sexual aggression over a 4-month follow-up (Gidycz, Orchowski, & Berkowitz, 2011). Despite other positive effects on attitudes, rebound effects were detected by the 7-month follow-up, such that men in the intervention group reported similar rates of sexual violence perpetration to men in the control group. Subsequent work has sought to extend the program by including a more rigorous focus on alcohol as a risk factor for violence (Orchowski et al., 2018).

RealConsent, a web-based sexual violence prevention program with a bystander and social norms approach, aims to deliver services in a less resource-intensive manner (Salazar, Vivolo-Kantor, Hardin, & Berkowitz, 2014). Participants complete six 30-min modules which model behaviors such as intervening, obtaining consent, and discussing activity with female sex partners. At 6-month follow-up, male undergraduate participants self-reported less sexual violence and more prosocial intervening behaviors than comparison subjects. All but one of the twelve secondary outcomes (e.g., understanding of consent, self-efficacy to intervene, rape myths, gender role ideology, normative beliefs, intentions to intervene) were found to be significant mediators of these relationships (Salazar et al., 2014). Given significant attrition in the study sample, these findings should be viewed as preliminary. Further, all participants were paid to complete a postprogram assessment following each unit, and we do not know yet whether more natural implementation would result in full engagement and similar effects.

Taken together, although there are numerous approaches to engaging men in sexual assault prevention, fewer than one third of existing sexual assault prevention approaches are geared toward male audiences (DeGue et al., 2014). There may be numerous factors contributing to limited work with men. Concerns about contributing to defensiveness when men are approached as potential perpetrators can be reduced when programming is framed around men’s role as bystanders in sexual assault prevention. Further, with few exceptions, to date such programs only demonstrate short-term effects on attitudes, and lack evidence that they affect sexually aggressive behavior (see Breitenbecher, 2000 and Gidycz, Orchowski, & Edwards, 2011).

Bystander Focused Prevention Programs

Bystander intervention, a prevention innovation that began 20 years ago (Berkowitz, 1994, 2002; Katz, 1994), focuses neither on potential victims nor perpetrators but on everyone as third-party witnesses or bystanders. Bystanders, by their presence as observers, peers, community leaders, or friends of survivors, have the opportunity to take action to interrupt behaviors across the sexual violence continuum, be a part of active safety nets and supports for survivors after an incident, and be spokespeople for new community norms that discourage coercion and abuse of power in relationships (Banyard, Plante, & Moynihan, 2005; McMahon & Banyard, 2012). Indeed, the federal guidelines and legislation released over the past three years that have mobilized campus responses to sexual assault include specific instructions about bystander intervention training (see White House Task Force Report, 2014).

The logic model for bystander intervention draws from three key theories (see Figure 3). Latané and Darley’s (1970) situational model of bystander behavior focuses mainly on decisional processes within the individual bystanders, which entail noticing the event, taking responsibility for doing something to address it, assessing one’s skills for stepping in, and finally choosing to take action. This model has been supported by research in relation to bystanders in a variety of situations including relationship abuse and sexual assault (for reviews, see Banyard, 2015; Burn, 2009; Shotland & Straw, 1976). Readiness to change theory (Banyard, Eckstein, & Moynihan, 2010), grounded in the transtheoretical model of change (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1986), adds a developmental component. It posits that educators’ ability to alter attitudes and behaviors related to bystander action and sexual assault prevention may change as people move through different stages of awareness and motivation to engage with the issue. Some individuals are in the early stage of denial or no awareness where they see little need to engage with prevention efforts, while in later stages bystanders may be quite motivated to help yet lack skills to effectively engage in action (Banyard, 2014; Banyard et al., 2010). This theory suggests that bystander programs should include activities to engage participants at all stages of readiness or sequence their programs to move individuals along the continuum. For example, while overall effects of Bringing in the Bystander were found for attitude change across two campuses in an randomized clinical trial (RCT), behavior effects (i.e., more bystander intervention) lasting 1 year were found for participants who entered the program at a high level of readiness (Moynihan et al., 2015). Finally, diffusion of innovation theory, pioneered by Rogers (2002), takes a wider community approach by engaging innovators as leaders in different peer groups and mobilizing them to change norms and model new behaviors among early adopters and ultimately throughout various subcommunities. This model, applied to bystander prevention in the Green Dot program (Coker et al., 2015), begins to draw attention to the importance of community norms. McMahon (2015) also highlights how mobilizing bystanders require attention to community variables such as physical spaces and social processes like collective efficacy, as well as trust in authorities.

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Figure 3.

Logic model: Bystander programs.

Programmatically, bystander prevention programs tend to draw most heavily from the situational model and focus on individual attitude change and skill building for action. They include information about sexual assault and its negative effects and exercises to connect individuals to the topic and help increase their ability to notice when intervention may be needed. Exercises are designed to motivate participants to feel greater responsibility for violence prevention. Participants are helped to see that even though barriers to action exist, action is possible and such programs are designed to help them use the skills they have or develop new ones to step in as active bystanders.

Bystander initiatives have taken many forms on campuses. These include more passive strategies like social marketing campaigns that reinforce messages about bystander action and model positive bystander actions for full campus communities (e.g., Potter, 2011) and motivational overview speeches (Coker et al., 2011). Research documents the effectiveness of these strategies at shifting attitudes and motivation to engage in prevention actions and they have the advantage of reaching a wide target audience (Potter, 2012). More active but also able to reach large audiences are interactive theater approaches (Ahrens et al., 2011; McMahon et al., 2015) and online training (Kleinsasser, Jouriles, et al., 2015). Both showed positive shifts in attitudes but also in bystander behavior outcomes. Finally, bystander intervention includes some of the most well-known programs like MVP, Bringing in the Bystander, and Green Dot, which all include in person skill-building workshops.

There is some evidence that these types of programs reduce some types of sexual violence among some high school–aged populations (Capilouto et al., 2014; Coker et al., 2017; Taylor, Stein, Mumford, & Woods, 2013). However, to date, no rigorous evaluation of bystander-focused prevention initiatives has documented reductions in sexual violence among college students, although they have found increases in positive bystander action (Banyard et al., 2007; Coker et al., 2015; Moynihan et al., 2015). For example, Coker and colleagues (2016) have evaluated Green Dot across several campuses over time and do document lower rates of sexual harassment and stalking, but their methodological design does not allow one to infer causality. ⁴

The Need for a Comprehensive Approach

Despite increasing attention to sexual violence on college campuses, preventing sexual violence among college students remains an elusive goal. The majority of prevention initiatives on college campuses are not rigorously evaluated, and among those that have been evaluated, only a few have demonstrated significant effects on the behavioral outcomes of victimization or perpetration. The largest effects are documented for women’s programs, especially Senn’s EAAA and the ESD program evaluated by Hollander, with more mixed effects produced by Gidycz et al.’s Ohio University Sexual Assault Risk Reduction program. Gidycz et al.’s (2011) evaluation of Berkowitz’s Men’s Workshop has demonstrated short-term reductions in self-reported sexual aggression, although rebound effects were found. Salazar et al. (2014) have also reported promising effects on men’s self-reported sexual violence using a web-based program. In addition, bystander intervention programs show some effectiveness at producing positive effects on bystander behavior (e.g., Banyard et al., 2007).

To date, these forms of prevention and response to the problem of sexual violence on college campuses have been relatively siloed. They are discussed in different articles and researched separately. Recent recommendations at the national level (e.g., White House Task Force, 2014) have focused on bystander intervention to the exclusion of women’s or men’s programming, despite the evidence that resistance education programs for women (in contrast to other program approaches) reduce victimization. Given the research reviewed above, and recent calls for more comprehensive approaches to prevention and response on campus (see Banyard, 2015; Basile et al., 2016; Dills, Fowler, & Payne, 2016; and the two special issues of Trauma, Violence, & Abuse October 2015 on this issue), it seems time to consider how all three types of programs might be useful when implemented together as part of ongoing education, skill building, and campus prevention efforts.

Accordingly, below we present an integrated model of prevention that connects all of these approaches. We argue that there are many mutually reinforcing elements of each of the three approaches. We also argue that given the critical need for improved prevention, we must focus on both proximal and distal targets of change. Specifically, while changing campus and social norms to protect against sexual assault and working to replace hegemonic masculinity with healthier gender norms are essential goals for sexual assault prevention efforts, it takes time to shift these distal outcomes. These outcomes may also be most effectively addressed in prevention efforts implemented early in the life span. Ensuring that students have access to strategies that can protect them and others from immediate, in the moment, risks for victimization represents a proximal target for change, which must be prioritized in tandem with efforts to change campus norms.

Areas of Overlap Between Resistance Education, Men’s Programming, and Bystander Intervention Training

Although resistance education, men’s programming, and bystander intervention training all aim to reduce violence and increase safety, there are clear differences among these approaches. Most obvious is their target: potential perpetrators, potential targets of violence, or entire communities. They also draw from different models of change: social norms, empathy development, skill modeling, empowerment, diffusion of innovation, and others. Some bystander intervention programs focus on the development of people’s readiness to change, addressing students differently depending on their readiness, while other programs do not have this developmental approach. The assumptions underlying the programs also differ. Bystander intervention programs may imply that women need others to protect them, while self-defense programs are based on the belief that women are capable of protecting themselves (McCaughey & Cermele, 2015). Programs focused on men recognize that men are disproportionately the cause of sexual violence and thus hold a particular responsibility for ending it (Katz, 1995).

Despite these differences, there are some common foundations, including the goal of increasing knowledge and awareness about the problem and impact of campus sexual assault and, for most programs, modeling concrete skills and strategies aimed at reducing sexual assault. Further, women’s programs and bystander intervention programs, including those focused only on men, share additional elements. Both have a foundation of positive approaches and empowerment, aiming to give people concrete actions that they can apply and create the feeling that there is something they can do to address violence, both when they are confronted with it personally (as a potential victim) and when they observe it in their peer group or community. Men’s programs help men approach and unpack social norms with a critical lens and empower them to challenge and change social norms about masculinity and sexual behavior in peer group contexts; the most effective women’s programs help women critically evaluate gender norms and expectations. All provide students with a wide range of concrete skills that they could use to prevent violence, rather than focusing on what not to do, and most aim to provide a toolbox of strategies that can be adapted to different situations, not a prescriptive list of “dos and don’ts.” These approaches encourage people to challenge traditional ways of acting—both traditional ways women and men are expected to behave and traditional norms of minding one’s own business.

The situational model of bystander behavior (Latané & Darley, 1970), one of the foundational theories of bystander intervention programs, is actually quite similar to the AAA model (Rozee & Koss, 2001) that underlies the most effective women’s programs. As noted above, the situational model theorizes a series of necessary precursors to action that include noticing the event, taking responsibility for action, assessing one’s relevant skills, and choosing to act. The AAA model similarly includes assessing the situation, acknowledging that it is potentially dangerous, and finally, acting to respond to the situation. The processes are parallel; the major difference is whether one takes action on behalf of others (bystander intervention) or oneself (self-defense and other women’s programs). Both types of programs encourage action at the same points in time: either at the moment of assault or, ideally, before an assault has even begun (McCaughey & Cermele, 2015). Perhaps most importantly, both types of programs, as well as some of the men’s programs, have as their ultimate goal the facilitation of deep-seated cultural change. Empowerment self-defense and other women’s programs aim to undermine expectations that women should be other-focused and encourage them to prioritize their own safety; they also challenge cultural conceptions of women as inherently weak and vulnerable (Hollander, 2004; McCaughey, 1997). Programs that address masculinity aim to undermine expectations that men must be sexually dominant. Finally, bystander interventions aim to create cultural change by enacting new behavioral norms and modeling that violence is not tolerated within a community. As a result, they are all also part of the project of undermining the cultural factors that promulgate sexual violence.

Such commonalities suggest that these different types of programs can complement and enhance each other. Most obviously, these programs target complementary audiences: men’s programs target potential perpetrators, women’s programs target potential victims, and bystander intervention programs add a role for the community as a whole. Of course, the simplistic equation of men with perpetration and women with victimization does not always hold—and indeed, is part of the cultural problem of sexual assault. The parallels between bystander intervention and self-defense programs can be capitalized upon to reinforce each other’s messages. Both programs emphasize identifying when risk is elevated in situations, though from different perspectives; using both programs may enhance the individual effectiveness of each program, as pedagogical theory clearly states that learning intersecting and related lessons in multiple settings reinforces outcomes. The confidence engendered by risk reduction and resistance efforts may enhance bystander intervention efficacy, and vice versa. Certainly, receiving similar messages multiple times in different programs increases the overall “dose” and, theoretically, the effectiveness of these interventions. Further, a combined approach has the potential to address more risk and protective factors that one single approach alone by targeting multiple levels of the social ecology (i.e., individual, relational, and community level).

In sum, the similarities between these program approaches suggest that integrated program administration could produce synergistic results that are more impactful than would be possible by implementing any single type of programming alone. Bystander intervention tells people how to intervene on other people’s behalf—but not on their own behalf (McCaughey & Cermele, 2015); women’s programs emphasize self-protection but less frequently the protection of others. This is important as most situations of sexual assault have no one else present (Hart and Miethe, 2008; Hamby, Weber, Grych, & Banyard, 2016). Men’s programming promotes diffusion of innovation and challenges to peer norms among those who may be in closest contact with potential perpetrators and, although less reliably efficacious, can help reframe views of masculinity and sexuality and engage men as strong allies (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Self-defense training and other women’s programs can be individualistic (though not always; see Hollander, 2016; Telsey, 1981); many bystander intervention programs focus on social norms and creating a positive community. Including everyone in prevention efforts will, theoretically, increase change in the overall culture.

Envisioning an Integrated Comprehensive Approach

We therefore propose an integrated, evidence-based approach to preventing sexual assault on college campuses which includes implementation of programs for men and women, as well as all students as potential bystanders. Although implementing such an approach may be more costly in the short term, we believe that the long-term benefits—in terms of the prevention of sexual assaults and their negative consequences, reductions in the need for survivor support and disciplinary action, and the empowerment of students—will more than balance those immediate costs. As scholars who have developed and evaluated individual components of this integrated approach, we reject the either/or framework that has dominated public and academic discourse and the dismissal of women-focused programming such as sexual assault resistance education and self-defense training which explicitly undermines woman blame. Instead, we suggest an integrated approach that uses the strengths of each type of programming to move toward our shared goal: making our campuses safer for all. The framework for such an approach is outlined in Figure 4.

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Figure 4.

A comprehensive approach to sexual violence prevention.

This model highlights how programs for women, men, and all students can include similar aspects of awareness raising, acknowledging barriers to bystander action, and skills practice. As we discuss in more detail below, although the ideal ordering of program components has yet to be empirically evaluated, consistent with a social ecological approach to prevention, we would recommend that programs that engage women and men be administered first to address proximal risk factors for sexual violence. As most men’s programs commonly include some form of bystander training to encourage men to address risky behaviors in their peers, such an approach ensures that students are provided with information on how to address immediate situational risk factors for sexual violence, whether in response to situations where they themselves are at risk for violence, or in response to situations where a peer is at risk of supporting or perpetrating sexual violence. To promote cultural change in norms, all students (or peer opinion leaders) could next be trained via bystander intervention skills training.

Importantly, implementing a comprehensive approach to prevention that includes programs for women, men, and all students requires that we alter our narrative regarding what is considered “prevention.” Prevention approaches focused on women have been ignored by both federal agencies and most college campuses (see DeGue et al., 2014), even though self-defense programming and other forms of sexual assault resistance education have been found to be effective in reducing sexual victimization on college campuses (and indeed have more compelling evidence that the often-funded bystander-focused prevention approaches; e.g., Hollander, 2014; Orchowski et al., 2008; Senn et al., 2015; Senn et al., 2017). It was not until 2016 that the Centers for Disease Control’s technical packages that outline strategies for sexual assault prevention even mentioned the importance of empowering girls and women, and acknowledged these skills-based programs as one component of a violence prevention approach (see Basile et al., 2016), and most recommendations continue to prioritize bystander intervention training, which—although promising—does not yet have a foundation of evidence to support its effectiveness on sexual assault outcomes. We believe that women’s sexual assault resistance training is a key component of primary prevention and criticisms of this form of programming are based in misconceptions of what it involves or promotes, rather than in research findings.

One frequently cited concern about women’s programs is the assumption that these programs affect only potential victims, and as such, do not get at the root causes of violence. In other words, programs focused on women are dismissed as not being “primary prevention” (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2004). Hollander (2016) contends that the problem with this argument is that it focuses only on individual men as the cause of sexual violence. It is important, however, to go deeper when identifying root causes to include societal attitudes related to perceived gender differences (e.g., seeing women as weak and passive), gender inequality, and expectations for social sexual scripts that give women little agency. Empowerment-based programs do address issues related to these root causes of violence, including the perception that women will never respond to intrusions with force (White & Kowalski, 1994), and several scholars have argued that ESD programs fit the criteria for primary prevention (Hollander, 2016; McCaughey & Cermele, 2015).

Another reason for the exclusion of women’s programming is the erroneous assumption that such programs blame victims, place responsibility on women for preventing an assault, and reduce men’s feelings of culpability for sexually aggressive behavior (Gidycz & Dardis, 2014; Hollander, 2016). Others have raised the concern that women may blame themselves if they were victimized after participating in a program. For example, Basile (2015) raises the question “What happens when women who complete the intervention cannot successfully resist rape?” (p. 2351) and states that the primary weakness of such programs is that they put “the onus for prevention on potential victims, possibly obscuring the responsibility of perpetrators and others” (p. 2351). It is important to note, however, that these assumptions are untrue for the empowerment self-defense and sexual assault resistance education programs that have been the focus of systematic research (e.g., Hollander, 2014; Orchowski et al., 2008; Senn et al., 2017) ⁵ . There is no evidence to suggest, for example, that risk reduction, resistance education, and self-defense programming blame victims for their own assaults. Moreover, empirical data indicate that women who are victimized after completing resistance programs are either no more likely (Orchowski et al., 2008) or less likely (Gidycz et al., 2015; Senn, Hobden, & Eliasziw, 2016; Senn et al., 2017) to experience self-blame than control group women who were also victimized. Feminist empowerment programs emphasize that perpetrators of sexual violence are entirely responsible for their actions, and nothing that a woman does or does not do incurs responsibility for a sexual assault. They thus may help to buffer future victims from self-blame deriving from the broader social and community messages that victims typically receive following an assault. In order to communicate to women that it is in no way their responsibility to prevent their own victimization, it is vital that these programs be offered in the context of programming for men (see Gidycz, Orchowski, & Edwards, 2011; Gidycz et al., 2015) and programs that enlist the support of all students to serve as proactive bystanders to address sexual violence.

Another frequently cited criticism of sexual assault resistance training is that if a woman resists assault, a perpetrator will simply assault someone else (see, e.g., Basile, 2015). However, it is reasonable to assume that at least some perpetrators might think twice about going on to assault someone else if they have been subject to a woman’s resistance (Hollander, 2016). Indeed, from a social norms perspective (Berkowitz, 2003), and consistent with research that has examined men’s regret associated with sexually aggressive behaviors (Abbey & McAuslan, 2004; Jewkes, Sikweyiya, Morrell, & Dunkle, 2010) and women’s perceptions of men’s recognition of the inappropriateness of their sexually aggressive behaviors (Edwards et al., 2014), it is at least as likely and perhaps more so that women’s assertive resistance could impact men’s perceptions of the unacceptability of such behaviors, thus reducing their likelihood of engaging in sexually aggressive behavior in the future.

It is interesting to note that critiques like those described here are leveled only at women’s programming, even though bystander intervention programs share the same logical structure (McCaughey & Cermele, 2015). For example, it is possible that if a potential perpetrator tries to assault someone and is met with resistance from a potential bystander, the perpetrator could go on to assault someone else where there are no bystanders present or where bystanders would not intervene. However, the authors have never heard of this as a criticism of bystander intervention programming because it is generally assumed that such intervention leads to a change in the norms associated with perpetrating violence. Unless we accept a view that women’s actions in their own interest have less power to change the world than men’s—or people of any gender—acting on behalf of others, we believe that this is also applicable for empowerment self-defense and other types of programming for women. When approaches for women are left out of prevention in favor of more politically “palatable” approaches, we miss an important opportunity to empower girls and women—and more of these women suffer sexual assault as a result.

Implementing a Comprehensive Approach

Several questions about how to best implement an integrated campus sexual assault prevention approach warrant research. For example, should men and women be offered conjoint programming to deliver some prevention messages? Such an approach has in many instances been abandoned by scholars who noted problems with potentially sharing risk reduction messages with potential perpetrators as well as concerns about how to deliver content when the goals for men and women appeared to be very different (see Gidycz, Rich, & Marioni, 2002). One key to effective prevention is ensuring interventions are targeted for their audience (e.g., Nation et al., 2003). Currently, the circumstances under which mixed gender programs are safe and acceptable are unclear. It is possible that separating men from women in discussions of sexual violence reduces the potential for men to be exposed to the perspectives and expectations of women, thereby reducing empathy induction among men. However, mixed gender discussions of sexual violence can incite defensiveness among men, and women survivors can have reason not to feel safe exploring issues related to sexual violence with men. Further, the aims of programs for women and men also vary considerably, and we feel strongly that resistance education techniques should not be shared with potential perpetrators. For these reasons, although it may be reasonable to conduct purely psychoeducational or awareness raising events in mixed groups, programs specifically targeting men or specifically targeting women may be best offered concomitantly to intact groups of men and women (see Gidycz, Orchowski, & Edwards, 2011; Gidycz et al., 2015).

When offering programs for men and women, researchers and practitioners must also wrestle with the dilemma that hosting women’s and men’s programs can reinforce the idea that only women are victims of sexual violence, and only men are perpetrators. To address this issue, we believe it is important to acknowledge within programs that on average, women tend to experience higher rates of victimization. Further, the majority of assaults are perpetrated by men, and adherence to traditional masculinity remains a primary risk factor in men’s perpetration of violence against women. Acknowledging these statistical patterns does not mean that all men are perpetrators or that all women are victims. Similarly, it also does not follow that men cannot experience victimization, or that no women perpetrate violence. The manner in which violence occurs is not inevitable, and violence can also occur between men or two women.

It is also important that everyone in the audience is acknowledged, and that participants are informed that not all individuals, including college students, identify as a man or woman. Moving forward, it is vital for discussions about how to address the needs of gender minorities in sexual assault prevention to be on the forefront of researchers’ and practitioners’ agendas. Developing tailored prevention approaches for gender and sexual minority students must also be considered. The most effective women’s programs are already inclusive of transwomen and women of all sexual identities. Some self-defense programs currently offer classes specifically for sexual minority populations, and some colleges also offer mixed gender self-defense classes, in addition to classes exclusively for women. This strategy ensures that men who feel endangered, as well as women, gender queer, transgender, gender nonconforming, or gender nonbinary individuals who do not feel comfortable participating in a class for women have access to the tools they need to protect themselves.

Comprehensive approaches to prevention also require that programs be offered throughout the course of college. Although introductory seminars can be offered as a part of first year student orientation, a single offering at the start of college without follow-up or scaffolding of additional programming efforts is insufficient. It is simply unreasonable to ask colleges to undo over a decade of socialization through a single workshop. Rather, we must consider sequential doses of programming that build logically on one another and address the developmental needs of students across different stages of college. A comprehensive approach to sexual violence prevention requires that more time be spent discussing these issues in various formats.

Ensuring that all students on campus are reached in prevention efforts is equally important. College campuses often struggle to systematically offer programming to all students, instead often responding to incidents of sexual violence or sprinkling programming efforts to groups who ask for intervention. Given that programming is associated with varying effects for individuals at high and low risk to perpetrate (Stephens & George, 2009), programs addressing targeted populations who are at varying levels of risk to perpetrate sexual aggression are also warranted.

A comprehensive approach also requires that prevention include efforts to address violence before it happens, but also target risk when it is evident, and provide aftercare to address incidents that occur on campus. Too often, prevention approaches are reactive rather than proactive. A proactive comprehensive sexual assault prevention approach includes targeting norms change on campus (i.e., distal targets for change), as well as providing students with skills to recognize and respond to risk for sexual violence, for themselves as well as their peers (i.e., proximal targets for change). As social and community norms take time to change, teaching women and community members skills to detect and respond to risks for sexual assault is essential for addressing immediate risk factors for sexual violence. Ensuring that resistance education programs are offered in tandem with other approaches is also empirically warranted, given compelling data to support the effectiveness of women’s sexual assault resistance programming.

The ideal ordering of these program types across the 4 years of college is also unclear. However, one potential strategy could be to offer first-year women sexual assault resistance or self-defense training while first-year men receive programming related to social norms and sexual behavior (e.g., Real Consent, Men’s Workshop). These trainings focused on individual-level risk factors might be followed by sessions focused on bystander intervention training and overall change in the campus climate. The first year of college is the period of highest risk (e.g., Flack et al., 2008); therefore, programs with highest proven efficacy on victimization and perpetration should be undertaken first. This would have the additional benefit of reducing revictimization and providing enhanced knowledge of on and off campus sexual violence support services at a time when they are most needed. This foundational work could be followed in later years, as students gain status and authority on campus, with bystander intervention training that promotes diffusion of innovation (as Green Dot does) and includes students, faculty, and staff as well as more individual skill building in safe and effective bystander action. Social marketing campaigns might both serve to build awareness and readiness prior to programming and serve to reinforce core content after programming. At this point, we can only hypothesize regarding the ideal ordering of programs; however, a combined stepwise approach seems warranted.

Another approach might integrate resistance education programs and bystander intervention for women. There are clear components of bystander intervention within resistance education and self-defense programs, although they do not necessarily use the language of bystander intervention. It may be that bystander intervention programs could serve to extend the skills taught in resistance education programs. Integrating elements of empowerment self-defense training into bystander intervention might also assist potential bystanders who doubt their ability to effectively and safely intervene. It is also possible that an integrated program that combines core concepts from both approaches could be effective.

Future Research Directions and Implications

Strong researcher and practitioner relationships will help to ensure that effective and comprehensive sexual assault prevention strategies are being implemented and invested in financially (which will save money in the long run as rates of sexual assault decline). Moreover, we urge funding agencies to prioritize strategies that have the strongest evidence (i.e., women’s sexual assault resistance training), in addition to methodologically innovative projects that seek to determine not just what is working but why and for whom. Finally, standards of prevention on college campuses should align with the best available evidence. This includes programming that targets all levels of the social ecological model as well as potential victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Additional recommendations are provided in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Implications for Practice, Research, and Policy.

For practice

1. College campuses must move beyond “checking the box,” that is, ensuring a minimum standard of prevention is implemented on campus, to implementing a comprehensive package of prevention activities well matched to the needs and resources of the community.

2. Answering core research questions will require strong partnerships between researchers and practitioners that should be mutually beneficial.

3. Partnerships between researchers and practitioners are necessary to implement prevention “packages” that have the greatest potential to be efficacious.

4. College and university personnel who are responsible for funding decisions at universities must provide resources for coordinated programming efforts grounded in research evidence. Financially investing in such efforts will likely provide safer campuses, highlight the institution’s commitment to ending violence, and save money in the long run.

For researchers and funding agencies

1. Funding agencies should include research on self-defense training and other prevention strategies targeted to women in sexual violence prevention grants.

2. The current article discusses how conceptually sexual assault resistance programs, men’s programs, and bystander programs can fit together to better actualize prevention, but research is needed to empirically assess these effects and the best ordering of programs. For example, are the needs of students best met with separate programming for men and women early on in their first years on campus that is then followed by bystander intervention? Is it effective to introduce social marketing campaigns prior to or after in person programs?

3. It is important to prioritize grants that include implementation science components, as well as grants that aim to dismantle current programs to better understand active ingredients. The identification of active ingredients will allow for better coordination of programming efforts and research designs that move beyond testing one program at a time to learning more about how programs work together.

4. There is a need for longer term follow-ups within the context of research. Limited budgets provided from funding agencies preclude the length of follow-up that may be necessary for documenting longer term program effects. Opportunities to renew funding for program evaluation grants to show longer term outcomes should be sought.

5. There is a need for funding opportunities that allow for research designs that incorporate implementation science and recognize the importance of identifying the active ingredients of programs.

For policy

1. Standards of prevention on college campuses should align with the best available evidence. The best available evidence suggests that colleges must move beyond implementing individual programs to widely disseminating prevention plans across students’ college years and should incorporate programs targeted to women as well as bystander intervention and men’s programs.

2. Efforts should be taken to ensure that programming addresses multiple risk and protective factors across the social ecology.

It is also necessary to take steps to better identify the active ingredients of various programs. Doing so requires that research designs include assessment batteries that are well matched to program outcomes, and examine a range of putative mediators. Examining moderators of program effects is equally important. Just as psychotherapy research long moved beyond the question of “does it work?” we also need to understand what works, for whom, and in what conditions when it comes to violence prevention. This entails utilizing implementation science frameworks to examine the ways in which research-based programs are being delivered in practice, and creating more partnerships between researchers and practitioners to rigorously evaluate the homegrown programming approaches grounded in best practices in prevention that have the potential for efficacy.

Conclusion

There is clearly no “silver bullet” for sexual assault prevention. Rather, in the present commentary, we suggest that it is likely necessary to implement multiple, intersecting, and integrated approaches in order to have a significant and sustained impact on rates of sexual assault (see Table 2 for a review of critical findings). We also know that single-shot doses of prevention are not effective. A next logical step in campus prevention is, therefore, to leverage the strengths of different types of programs and widen the scope of prevention activities offered to students across the years that they are enrolled. Doing so requires that programs target both distal and proximal targets for change, including social norms, gender role expectations, and immediate risk factors for sexual violence. When offered together in an integrated fashion, programs offered to women, men, and all students on college campuses have the potential for a greater and more synergistic impact on rates of sexual violence.

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Table 2.

Critical Findings.

1. Sexual assault prevention efforts on college campuses remain relatively siloed, with different prevention approaches often being positioned against each other, rather than being more appropriately viewed as potentially synergistic.

2. Risk reduction, resistance education, and empowerment-based self-defense approaches show good efficacy in reducing rates of victimization, and show no evidence of promoting victim blame among participants or survivors. As such, there is no evidence to exclude high-quality risk reduction, resistance education, and empowerment self-defense programs from sexual assault prevention efforts on college campuses.

3. Effort should be taken to shift from implementing single-shot programming efforts on college campuses to integrated and sequenced comprehensive programming approaches that build in complexity and content over time.

4. Little is known regarding how various types of programs might be integrated into a comprehensive package, representing a critical gap in the scientific knowledge base.