(PS11-A23) High Risk Males and Bystander Intervention for Sexual Assault Programming: Evidence for Targeted Programming

Sexual assault is a prevalent issue that greatly impacts the well-being of students on college campuses. Bystander intervention attempts to reduce likelihood of sexual assault by increasing motivation and efficacy of bystanders to intervene on risky sexual situations to fight against a culture of sexual violence. Importantly, the bystander intervention Green Dot was found to reduce sexual assault victimization on college campuses relative to other campus prevention programs. Although promising, sexual assault victimization continued to occur at unacceptable rates. High-risk male groups (HRM; e.g., male intercollegiate athletes, fraternity members, and male reserve officers’ training corps) have been found to hold concerning attitudes regarding sexual violence.

The present study aimed to examine whether Green Dot would be comparably effective for males from these groups. This was operationalized using an abbreviated Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale and the Bystander Behavior Scale. This study examined four groups of males – HRM (n=252), non-HRM (n=568), HRM who completed Green Dot (n=103), and non-HRM who completed Green Dot (n=89). First, replicating well-established findings, HRM scored higher than non-HRM in their rape myth acceptance (t=3.91; p< .001). Detection of bystander behaviors, a critical component of bystander intervention, was examined between HRM and non-HRM. HRM were much more likely to report they did not encounter different types of bystander situations relative to other males on campus, including seeing a potential perpetrator from attempting to do sexual acts to a drunk person (x²=10.574; p=.001) and walking a friend home who has had too much to drink (x²=6.626; p=.010); this is concerning due to consistent findings that high-risk males have more exposure to risky environments. Next, we wanted to determine the efficacy of Green Dot training with HRM. Encouragingly, Green Dot HRM were more likely to indicate they encountered these events than non-Green Dot HRM, including encountering a possible perpetrator intending to do sexual acts to someone who is drunk (x²=5.057; p=.025) and recognizing a sexist joke (x²=4.530; p=.033).  Given this, the preliminary evidence indicating Green Dot HRM did not differ from non-Green Dot HRM in terms of rape myth acceptance (t=.260; p=.795) is discouraging. Additionally, Green Dot HRM were found to have substantially higher rape myth acceptance (t=3.158; p=.002) when compared to Green Dot non-HRM. Although Green Dot was ineffective in terms of reducing rape-supportive attitudes and increasing bystander behaviors among HRMs, it did provide beneficial skills in detecting bystander situations for high-risk males, which is the first barrier to bystander intervention. Future research is needed to understand how to best leverage high-risk males into intervening on these situations, as they are often in bystander situations, in order to reduce sexual assault victimization on college campuses.