ConnectEd: A Randomized Controlled Trial Connecting Through Educational Training

Rates of sexual violence (SV) or dating violence (DV) remain high among college students (22% in the past year for female undergraduates). Binge drinking commonly occurs (25% of undergraduates report binge drinking in the past month) and is a strong predictor of sexual risk taking and violence victimization and perpetration. Given connections between SV/DV risk and alcohol use and abuse, many advocate prevention programming to jointly address SV/DV and alcohol abuse. Bystander interventions, recognized as promising violence prevention strategies, are unique in their engagement of all community members to 1) recognize situations that may become violent and 2) learn to safely and effectively intervene to reduce violence risk. Based on their promise, the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (SaVE) now requires all publicly-funded colleges to provide bystander intervention in the hopes of reducing sexual violence. No randomized intervention trial has compared bystander interventions focused exclusively on SV/DV prevention with those additionally addressing alcohol abuse prevention within the bystander context. We propose such an experimental trial at the University of Kentucky (UK), a nationally recognized leader in addressing sexual violence through bystander intervention programming. The purpose of this randomized intervention trial is to evaluate the relative efficacy of bystander training elements. In this study will be randomized to one of the following: 1) Online Bystander Training (Haven), 2) Online Substance Abuse Training (AlcoholEdu), 3) In-person Bystander Training (Green Dot Intensive Training), or 4) In-person Bystander/Substance Abuse Training (ConnectEd). Aim 1: Evaluate methods to capture behaviors and diffusion of training through social media communications (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). Aim 2: Determine the relative efficacy of the three bystander training conditions to a) increase bystander efficacy and behaviors by domain (alcohol abuse and violence prevention), b) reduce acceptance of SV/DV, alcohol's role in sexuality, and alcohol use / abuse, and c) reduce risk taking behaviors by domains of sexual behavior and alcohol use or abuse. Aim 3: Determine the relative cost of implementing bystander approaches and their cost effectiveness. Design: Incoming UK undergraduates will be recruited and randomized to one of the four conditions and followed for 9 months, one academic year (n=4000, total over 2 academic year cohorts). A mixed-method approach will be used to measure intervention fidelity and costs over time and by condition. Using the most rigorous design available, we seek to generate new understanding of how novel bystander intervention approaches work to reduce not only SV/DV risk taking behaviors but also reduce alcohol abuse.

Incoming students will be invited to participate in a randomized trial testing bystander program efficacy. Those consenting to study participation will be randomized to one of the four conditions. These conditions include:

1. In-person Green Dot Intensive Bystander-based Sexual Violence Prevention Training (GreenDot);
2. In-person Green Dot Intensive Bystander Training combined with Substance Abuse Prevention Training (WellAware);
3. Online Bystander-based Sexual Violence Prevention Training (Haven), and;
4. Online Substance Abuse Training (AlcoholEdu).

All incoming students (17-24) agreeing to study participation will be invited to complete surveys at baseline (prior to training), and at end of the fall and spring semesters. Additionally, students will be asked to complete micro-surveys using the myUK app.

Student recruitment will be conducted as students are entering UK during their summer orientation (June and July). We anticipate that at 45-50% of students will agree to study participation and provide data; thus our final participant pool is expected to consist of 4,000 participants from academic years 2016 and 2017.