Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance Program

Evidence Rating: Top Tier

Highlights

Program: A sexual assault resistance program for first-year female university students.
Evaluation Methods: A well-conducted multi-site randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a sample of 899 women at three diverse Canadian universities.
Key Findings: Approximately a 50% reduction in the incidence of rape during the 12 months after random assignment (5.2% of women in the treatment group were raped vs. 9.8% of women in the control group, a difference that was statistically significant).

The Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance program consists of four three-hour units that involve games, lectures, discussion, and application and practice activities. The Assess unit focuses on improving women’s assessment of the risk of sexual assault by male acquaintances and developing strategies to minimize that risk; the Acknowledge unit focuses on overcoming emotional barriers to seeing the danger in situations that have turned coercive; the Act unit offers instruction about effective options for resistance and includes two hours of self-defense training; and the Sexuality and Relationships unit provides information on sexual health, safer-sex practices, strategies for communicating about sex, and an opportunity for participants to explore their sexual attitudes, values, and desires.

The cost of the program to a university is approximately $600 per student in U.S. dollars during the first of year of implementation (including staff training and all other costs), and slightly lower in subsequent years.[1]

Click here for the EAAA Program website.

References

[1] Our cost estimate is somewhat higher than that developed by Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development because we assume higher staffing costs.

Senn, C.Y., Eliasziw, M., Barata, P.C., Thurston, W.E., Newby-Clark, I.R., Radtke, H.L. & Hobden, K.L. (2015). Efficacy of a Sexual Assault Resistance Program for University Women. The New England Journal of Medicine 372:2326-35.

Senn, C.Y., Eliasziw, M., Hobden, K.L., Newby-Clark, I.R., Barata, P.C., Radtke, H.L., and Thurston, W.E. (2017). Secondary and 2-Year Outcomes of a Sexual Assault Resistance Program for University Women. Psychology of Women Quarterly 41(2):147-62.

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Top Tier

Programs shown in well-conducted RCTs, carried out in typical community settings, to produce sizable, sustained effects on important outcomes. Top Tier evidence includes a requirement for replication – specifically, the demonstration of such effects in two or more RCTs conducted in different implementation sites, or, alternatively, in one large multi-site RCT. Such evidence provides confidence that the program would produce important effects if implemented faithfully in settings and populations similar to those in the original studies.
Near Top Tier

Programs shown to meet almost all elements of the Top Tier standard, and which only need one additional step to qualify. This category primarily includes programs that meet all elements of the Top Tier standard in a single study site, but need a replication RCT to confirm the initial findings and establish that they generalize to other sites. This is best viewed as tentative evidence that the program would produce important effects if implemented faithfully in settings and populations similar to those in the original study.
Suggestive Tier

Programs that have been evaluated in one or more well-conducted RCTs (or studies that closely approximate random assignment) and found to produce sizable positive effects, but whose evidence is limited by only short-term follow-up, effects that fall short of statistical significance, or other factors. Such evidence suggests the program may be an especially strong candidate for further research, but does not yet provide confidence that the program would produce important effects if implemented in new settings.

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Near Top Tier

Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance Program

Highlights

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