Adapting, Developing, And Testing An Evidence-Based Life Skills Training Approach For Sexual Assault Prevention

National Health Promotion Associates (NHPA) adapted the Botvin Life Skills Training (LST) program for incoming fourth class cadets at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). The resulting adaptation, called Cadet Healthy Personal Skills (CHiPS), provides cadets with the knowledge, attitudes, and skills to enhance their personal resilience, increase their potential for success, help them develop healthy and rewarding personal relationships, and reduce sexual harassment and assault. The CHiPS program includes ten units, spread across three blocks of content, and each block teaches cadets a range of life skills. All incoming fourth class cadets (N=1,203) were invited to participate in this study, beginning in the Summer of 2017, and of those, 1,098 cadets (91.3%) consented to participate in the trial.Twenty-five facilitators were trained to implement the newly adapted CHiPS program. Half of the incoming class [four Basic Cadet Training (BCT) squadrons] was assigned to receive the intervention, while the other half (four BCT squadrons) continued to receive standard trainings already in place at USAFA. All cadets completed a self-report survey at pretest, posttest, and at a 12-month follow-up