Preventing Violence Against Women: A Web-based Approach

This is a study to determine whether a theoretically-driven web-based 3-hour intervention designed for male college students called RealConsent is effective in increasing prosocial intervening behaviors and in preventing sexual violence perpetration. Sexual violence programs for this population have been implemented for decades in the United States, but a program that is web-based and incorporates the bystander education model has never been implemented or tested. In this study, male college students will be recruited online, enrolled and randomly assigned to RealConsent or to a comparison condition. Prior to the intervention, investigators will ask questions about their intervening and sexually coercive behaviors and other theoretical and empirical factors related to the study outcomes. Investigators will survey the young men again at post-intervention, and at 6-months follow-up to determine whether young men in the RealConsent program intervened more often and engaged in less sexual violence compared to young men in the comparison condition. The main hypotheses are: (1) college men in the RealConsent program will report more instances of prosocial intervening; and (2) college men in the RealConsent program will report less sexual violence against women.