The Intervention Initiative’ s content layout is underpinned by the four stages for bystander intervention that individuals must go through in order to move from inaction to action. These are: noticing the event, understanding that it is problematic, assuming responsibility to act and possessing the skills to intervene. Thus sessions 1 – 4 focus on the first three stages and cover understandings about the psychology of bystander action, sexual and domestic abuse in all their forms, including knowledge about law and consent, gender, and the contexts which allow violence to take place. The sessions include a specific empathy exercise and aim to increase understandings of victim experiences, shift attitudes about violence, including rape myth acceptance and foster motivation to act.
Key to being able to act is acquiring the requisite skill-set. Motivation in itself is not sufficient. Thus, sessions 5 – 8 focus on strategies for intervention and use experiential learning through scripted role-plays to increase confidence to intervene and acquire situation-specific skills. Research suggests that role-play in interactive small group settings in itself may contribute to opinion change on the part of participants. These sessions develop communication and speaking skills and other professional and transferable leadership skills relevant to students throughout their university career, enhancing their employability.
Social Norms Theory is integrated throughout The Intervention Initiative. When individuals misperceive a social norm they are less likely to intervene and more likely stay silent. The lack of corrective intervention encourages and facilitates problematic behaviour. Correcting the actual misbeliefs of participants relating to their own peer group on sexual violence and willingness to intervene is a crucial component of the intervention, and is facilitated by participant interaction during group sessions. At the start of the intervention a social norms questionnaire relating to participants’ own and peer norms is distributed, and the results are fed back to students in session 5. Thus the facilitator is able to correct the actual social norm misperceptions of that particular cohort of students.
Good pedagogy is key to achieving learning outcomes successfully. The well-established criteria for effective behaviour change – which are echoed by adult educationalists – and the processes of the trans-theoretical model of change inform, and are adhered to by, The Intervention Initiative. These criteria and a list of questions that university managers should ask of any intervention are found in the evidence review from p. 27.
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