Project staff: Caitlin Sulley, Deirdre Rabideau, Adam Jimenez.
This project aims to understand and evaluate the bystander intervention programming offered across UT System’s eight academic institutions. At the conclusion, the university’s Counseling and Mental Health Center (CMHC) and partner institutions are expected to understand the strengths of bystander intervention programming in the context of potential improvements to promote increased efficacy.
The project goals are to create evaluative approaches for the University of Texas System Bystander Intervention initiatives for customization across the UT System academic institutions including to:
- Provide individualized technical assistance and training to UT System institutions to facilitate the evaluation of efforts as requested.
- Develop preliminary evaluative approaches for other violence prevention programming
- Disseminate findings to UT System institutions and other networks about best practices in bystander intervention programming from related research activities.
To achieve these goals, the Institute on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault (IDVSA) will work with CMHC and stakeholders at partner institutions in an interactive and collaborative research model over 36 months.
IDVSA will develop and deliver a toolkit for campus bystander intervention evaluation. The focus of this toolkit will be on campus adaptability and community-level indicators. From the needs assessment, literature review, campus survey and focus groups, and expert consultation, IDVSA will develop an evaluation approach for use by individual institutions to assess the formation, process, and impact of their bystander intervention programming. IDVSA will pilot test the measures to ensure rigor and feasibility.