Summary

Sexual and dating violence (SDV) disproportionately affects youth and are an early and pernicious risk factor for negative physical and mental health across the lifespan, and health disparities across communities. Yet few prevention initiatives lead to reductions in exposure and are grounded in the experiences of marginalized youth who acutely bear this health burden. A diverse group of youth engaged by the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault through Project Dream, Own, and Tell (DOT) have identified the lack of effective SDV prevention efforts in their community and have clearly identified the need to engage significant adults in prevention work. A collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and community members will conduct a feasibility process evaluation of current youth work with significant adults in the DOT program.

Researchers and Partners

Individual bio sketches can be found here.

About this Project

Initial Approach

The project began at the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Violence, where Project Dream, Own, Tell (DOT) was developed and has been implemented since 2014. Both Frye and Banyard have consulted with the Alliance about research and evaluation, and over the years preliminary outcome data has been collected. This grant provided an opportunity to take a closer look at a part of DOT that has received less evaluation attention: the adult/parent workshop.

How did the partnerships come together?

The partnerships with the researchers on this project were born out of a relationship between Haviland and Sarkar from the Alliance and Frye and Banyard.  Haviland and Sarkar were committed to understanding the evidentiary basis for sexual violence prevention as well as to conducting meaningful evaluation of Project DOT.  They were also committed to practitioner/researcher collaborations.  Drs. Frye and Banyard are equally committed to these types of collaborations and so agreed to conduct a study on the feasibility of conducting the adult experiential workshop in marginalized communities.

How are residents in the community facing this problem/research question?

Relationship and sexual violence (RSV) disproportionately affects youth in immigrant and other marginalized communities (Fedina et al., 2016; Henry & Zeytinoglu, 2012). RSV negatively impacts adolescent development and leads to a host of short- and long-term physical and mental health consequences that magnify health disparities for these groups of young people (Fedina et al., 2016). Risk and protective factors also vary by race/ethnicity (Schnurr & Lohman, 2013). Yet few prevention initiatives are culturally relevant and grounded in the experiences of marginalized youth, especially African-American, Latinx, and immigrant youth and families who acutely bear this health burden (Ravi, Black, et al., 2019; Ravi et al., 2020; Ravi, Mitschke, et al., 2019) and adaptation with input from participants is key (Steiker, 2008).

Recent evaluations highlight that RSV prevention is not one-size-fits-all as evidence-based programs showed diminished effects among marginalized adolescents (Coker et al., 2020). Research shows that adults are key resources for adolescents and can promote well-being including healthy relationships. The current study represents a pilot implementation (feasibility and acceptability) evaluation of an innovative component of a strengths-based, primary prevention program with African-American, Latinx, and Southeast Asian youth developed by the Alliance to engage parents and other significant adults (grandparents, aunts, adult siblings, community leaders) as prevention partners. The current mixed methods study examined perceptions of adults and youth leaders who participated in four individual, day-long adult training workshops.

How did this inform research design?

A mixed methods design was chosen to gather information that would be directly usable by the Alliance and that would enable us to hear directly from youth and adults about the impact of the prevention program.

What is the significance of this project, how is it unique?

To date, most relationship and sexual violence prevention programs focus solely on youth as individuals. If materials for parents and other adults are available, they are not the focus of evaluation.

The current project is one of the few preliminary evaluations of a youth-taught adult program focused on helping significant adults engage in conversations about dating and sexual violence prevention and healthy relationships. The program was developed by youth in response to a need they identified in their community and represents a practitioner-researcher collaboration.

Evolution and Change

All data collection was completed prior to the pandemic outbreak in March 2020. The study utilized a mixed methods including surveys and focus groups with adults and interviews with youth. Community partners have been involved throughout the research process including design of the study, review of findings, and publication of findings.

Project DOT is an innovative, multi-component relationship and sexual violence prevention model designed to engage youth from historically underserved communities that are traditionally not the recipients of mainstream sexual health, rights, or violence prevention education.

Partnerships in marginalized communities are fundamental to the principles of the program.  Project DOT offers unique spaces for identity-based groups to participate in discussion of issues such as healthy relationships, consent, by-stander intervention and modifying existing community social norms around sexual and relationship violence. Identity-based youth groups facilitated thus far have included groups for Black/ African American, East, South-east and South Asian, Latinx, LBTQI+, Muslim-identified young women, young men and women of color, youth whose mothers have been incarcerated, immigrant and refugee youth, youth from low-income families, as well as young athletes of color.  Project DOT partners with local community groups to co-facilitate the DOT curriculum so that the themes of sexual/relationship violence and identity are effectively interwoven. Additional partnerships were developed in order to implement the community mobilization component of the curriculum. 

Project DOT includes three core components:

Featured in these components are two innovative, leadership opportunities: a peer engagement activity and an engaging significant adults initiative.  In order to implement the feasibility pilot of the adults initiative (the subject of this report), the Alliance relied on existing partnerships with Just As I Am (JAIA) Youth Empowerment, a youth leadership program serving youth of color from traditionally marginalized communities; Hour Children, a program for the families of incarcerated individuals; and new partnerships with The HOPE Center Harlem & Dream Center Harlem, both located in Harlem. Having co-facilitated Project DOT groups with JAIA, some of the most engaged and committed youth from those groups volunteered to develop an experiential adult group on sexual violence prevention.  They learned to focus group their ideas with adults, work with staff to design a workshop for adults, and ultimately to co-facilitate the groups.  Several Project DOT participants in Hour Children who sponsored groups for youth with an incarcerated parent also volunteered to undergo special training and co-facilitate the adult workshops.  The H.O.P.E. Center and Dream Center NYC hosted several all-day events where this pilot was conducted.

Are there unique challenges to this study?

The study design required a six-hour session with the adults who participated in the workshop, beginning with registration and ending with the follow-up focus groups.  It was challenging for the youth facilitators, the Alliance staff, the researchers, and the adults to dedicate the better part of a Saturday to this endeavor.  Despite this, Alliance staff and youth facilitators were able to recruit four groups of adults to participate in the adult workshop and the follow-up focus groups over a four-month period.  Additionally, Alliance staff recruited and trained multiple youth facilitators to co-facilitate the workshops.  It was sometimes a challenge to maintain a cohesive group that was sufficiently trained to co-lead these discussions. This was solved by making the co-facilitation an option for some of the participants in the community mobilization component of Project DOT (an activity they had already committed to) and by recruiting a big enough group to account for attrition. Although, we used fliers, word of mouth and partner site visits to recruit, recruitment was still a challenge due to the length of time required for the study. We carefully thought of incentives for each adult group including stipends, food, and certificates as well as following up with a healthy relationships resource list that provided additional value to participants.

Results and Findings

Results showed high feasibility and acceptability. For example, parents and significant adults with youth in their lives reported a strong desire to learn more about sensitive prevention topics like relationship and sexual violence prevention and provided suggestions to improve the feasibility of the workshop. In addition, adults and youth perceived that the workshop co-led by trained youth and staff members from the Alliance targeting adults in relationship and sexual violence prevention had a positive impact on them by increasing adult’s knowledge and confidence on how to better approach sensitive topics with youth, and by empowering youth and letting them feel respected by the adult audience. The current pilot study highlights the important role for significant adults in enhancing relationship and sexual violence prevention, as well as the role of youth as facilitators of adult learning in these prevention spaces.

We were fortunate in that we were able to complete the study data collection before the COVID 19 pandemic. Given the strong partnership we had, we added a component to the project to help evaluate an online version of the youth DOT curriculum. The DOT curriculum went online in response to the pandemic. To date there are few evaluations of conducting prevention work with youth in a synchronous remote format. We are currently working with our partners to evaluate what youth think about this type of prevention and to assess some preliminary impacts.

The positive feedback regarding acceptability and feasibility that the Alliance staff and youth facilitators received from the study has led the Alliance to incorporate the adult component permanently into the community mobilization portion of the Project DOT curriculum.  Participants in the 13-18 week Project DOT curriculum now have the option of learning to set up and to co-facilitate the experiential workshop for adults in their community as part of their community mobilization project (required of each Project DOT participant).  In addition, subsequent to the completion of this study, the Alliance received resources that will allow it to expand its Youth Educator Program that is drawn from Project DOT participants. One of the areas that these youth leaders will working on is the administration and facilitation of adult workshops.  This will both allow Project DOT youth to expand their knowledge of sexual and relationship violence, their skills as facilitators and leaders, as well as expand the capacity of the Alliance to provide these important workshops.

The findings affirm the positive impact of youth voices in engaging adults on the topics of sexual violence prevention, as well as adults increased confidence in addressing the topic with youth. This information addresses the difficulty that Project DOT parents and significant adults that have voiced to the Alliance, through previous focus groups, in connecting with their youth.  Hearing and understanding what youth need in order to feel supported and safe helps to bridge a huge communication gap experienced by traditionally underserved families.

Next Steps