Measurement Tools to Assess Relationship Abuse and Sexual Assault Prevention Program Effectiveness Among Youth

This article describes the adaptation, development, and psychometric properties of survey instruments to assess outcomes of bystander-focused violence prevention efforts among high school students, including media literacy, rape myths, bystander readiness, bystander barriers and facilitators of bystander action, bystander intentions, perceptions of school personnel helping, perceptions of peer helping, and victim empathy.

The study was based on data collected from 3,172 high school students across 25 schools in northern New England.

Overall, the measures demonstrated acceptable fit indices in multilevel exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Whereas most measures and subscales had adequate reliability, several measures had less than ideal internal consistency, likely because of the limited number of items.

Although additional measurement work is needed, these measures provide researchers and practitioners with foundational tools for basic research and program evaluation.