In Their Own Words: Sophomore College Men Describe Attitude and Behavior Changes Resulting From a Rape Prevention Program 2 Years After Their Participation

Abstract

The study conducted involved assessing students from a Southeastern public university during two academic years, after their participation in an all-male sexual assault peer education program. The study findings revealed that 79% of 184 college men reported attitude change, behavior change, or both. Furthermore, a multistage inductive analysis revealed that after seeing The Men's Program, men intervened to prevent rapes from happening. Participants also modified their behavior to avoid committing sexual assault when they or a potential partner were under the influence of alcohol. Implications for future research were discussed.

Using Masculinity to Stop Sexual Violence: Must Women Be Weak for Men to Be Strong?

“…A better choice would be to feature a heterosexual male survivor's story Running Head: MY MASCULINITY HELPS 5 first: it teaches men how it would feel to be raped, and that perpetrators are often heterosexual and use rape to control other heterosexual men (Foubert & Newberry, 2006). Depicting maleon-male rape has been shown to increase men's understanding about rape, evoke more empathy for female survivors, lower rape myth acceptance, improve bystander interventions, and reduce rape proclivity (Foubert & Newberry, 2006;Foubert & Perry, 2007;Langhinrichsen-Rohling et al, 2011;Schewe, 2002) up to 2 years post-program (e.g., Foubert, Godin, & Tatum, 2010).…”

Making visible : an exploration of trainer conceptualization of program content related to gender, racial, and sexual identity within college sexual assault prevention programs

“…Most commonly race is identified as a factor in need of further exploration as relates to sexual and gender-based violence. One sentiment that appears within the literature is that sample sizes are too small to consider racial differences and that future studies should employ larger samples (Foubert et al, 2010;Kress et al, 2006). Bradley et al (2009) justify their exclusion of race based on time constraints and note that it did not fit into the scope of their study, but they indicate a need for additional research on race as related to sexual assault prevention.…”

“…For example, programs geared towards risk reduction for women were found to frame women solely as survivors and/or potential survivors of sexual and genderbased violence (Breitenbecher & Gidycz, 1998;Gidycz, Lynn, Rich, Marioni, Loh, Blackwell, Stafford, Fite, & Pashdag, 2001). Similarly, among the programs examined in this review, those focused exclusively on men were found to essentialize men as sexual aggressors and/or potential perpetrators (Foubert & Newberry, 2006;Foubert et al, 2010).…”

“…given corrective information about the rates of cross-race rape, our intervention was not significant in increasing agreement that white women are more likely to be raped by white men than by Black men" (p. 117 Where racial identity does become more prominent within the college sexual assault prevention program literature is in the limitations and future recommendation sections (Anderson & Whiston, 2005;Bradley et al, 2009;Foubert & Newberry, 2006;Foubert et al, 2010;Frazier et al,1994;Heppner et al, 1999;Kress et al, 2006;Milhausen et al, 2006). Most commonly race is identified as a factor in need of further exploration as relates to sexual and gender-based violence.…”

“…This question is: should sexual assault prevention programs be designed to serve separate female and male audiences, mixed gender audiences, or a combination of both? Of the literature reviewed, the majority of programs used a mixed gender format (Ahrens et al, 2011;Banyard et al, 2009;Black et al, 2000;Borden et al, 1988;Bradley et al, 2009;Coker et al, 2011;Fonow et al, 1992;Frazier et al,1994;Milhausen et al, 2006;Rothman & Silverman, 2007); some used or evaluated a combination of mixed and segregated formats (Anderson & Whiston, 2005;Earle, 2009;Kress et al, 2006;Lafrance et al, 2012); some used men only, gender segregated formats (Choate, 2003;Foubert & Newberry, 2006;Foubert et al, 2010;Heppner et al, 1999); and some used some used women only, gender segregated formats (Gidycz et al, 2001;Breitenbecher & Gidycz, 1998 (Bradley et al, 2009). …”