Measuring actual reduction of risk to child abuse: a new approach

Previous efforts to measure the effectiveness of child abuse prevention programs have relied on proximate measures presumed to be predictive of actual skills. This paper presents documentation that brings those assumptions into question, describes actual observation and measurement of behavioral change in children before and after prevention education, and correlates that behavioral response with more traditional measures of effectiveness. Unique to the evaluation was the staging of an actual situation in which each of the children had an opportunity to leave the school building with a stranger. Each simulation was videotaped and conducted in such a way that the children remained unaware of the fact that they had been tested. In addition, tests of language development, self-esteem and knowledge of prevention and safety concepts were administered before and after participating in the Children Need to Know Personal Safety Training Program [1]. Several findings have significant value for future examinations and programming. The effectiveness of a primary prevention program based on age-appropriate, experiential and interactive instruction was empirically documented. Traditional instrumentation which elicits written or verbal responses to cognitive questions about safety may be misleading in assessing children's vulnerability. Higher self-esteem before instruction and higher knowledge/attitude scores after instruction were found to be predictive of a reduction in vulnerability. While this is a significant series of findings, some children did not achieve the objectives of the prevention program. These results suggest further possibilities for evaluation and some direction for improving prevention education.