Summary: 142 male fraternity members at a large University in the central United States participated in the study. Based on pretest data, the participants were either labeled as low-risk or high-risk for engaging in sexually coercive behavior. Six peer-educators taught the Bringing in the Bystander violence prevention program during a single afternoon. The intervention was 90 minutes long. The researchers found that there was significant decrease of rape myth acceptance at post test and at 5-week follow-up for the high- and low- risk male participants. Participants from both groups reported decreased rates of sexually coercive behaviors at post-test and follow- up testing. The high risk participants’ sexually coercive behaviors at post-test of the intervention were equal to the low risk participant’s measures at pre-test, indicating that the prevention program was successful overall in decreasing the likeliness of males to engage in sexually coercive behaviors.
Application/Evaluation: This article is useful for professionals who work in violence prevention on college campuses. A pre-test, post-test and follow-up evaluation of the program was conducted. However, the follow-up testing did not measure long term results.
Limitations: The majority of the study participants (98%) identified as heterosexual. It is not known what the effectiveness of the prevention programming is on male LGBT populations.