Measurement of bystander actions in violence intervention evaluation: Opportunities and Challenges

This review discusses design and methodological challenges specific to measuring bystander actions in the evaluation of bystander-based violence prevention programming. "Bystanders" are defined as people who are present immediately before, during and/or after a violent event, but are not a perpetrator nor the intended victim. Bystander-based violence prevention programs seek to prevent or mitigate violent events by empowering bystanders to intervene on acts of violence and social norms that promulgate violence.

Effective bystander-based violence prevention programs demonstrate increased bystander intentions, actions, and attitudes [Bringing in the Bystander;¹² iSCREAM;³³; The Men's Project;²⁰ and Green Dot,³] lowered violence acceptance scores^{19,21,22,23,36} and reduced sexual violence perpetration and victimization.^3••,6,20 However, bystander-based violence prevention programs are methodologically challenging to evaluate, due to the wide diversity of programs being implemented and the multifactorial and contextual nature of acts of violence.

Measures of bystander actions temporally-connected to specific, high-risk opportunities are recommended approaches to capture bystander experiences and address the methodological challenges in measuring bystander actions and evaluating violence prevention programming.