REaDAPt: Research Report Evaluation of three European schools-based domestic violence prevention education programmes

This report discusses research findings from the REaDAPt Project: a programme of work funded by the European Commission’s DAPHNE III violence prevention programme. The research described here sought to evaluate the effectiveness of three pre-existing Relationship Education and Domestic Abuse Prevention Tuition interventions provided in schools.These programmes were as follows:1. Relationships without Fear, a six week programme that is delivered in primary and secondary schools (to young people aged 8 to 16 years) by external facilitators.2. La Máscara del Amor, a six week programme delivered by teachers to young people typically aged 14-16 years.3. Filles et Garçons, en route pour l'Egalité, a one-off session delivered by an external facilitator to young people aged 13-25 years in schools, vocational training centres and information centres.A fourth programme, developed out of the ReADAPt Project, and piloted by the Maltese Regional Dialogue and Development Foundation, is currently undergoing evaluation. All four interventions have been evaluated using a pre-test, post-test survey design, utilising the Attitudes towards Domestic Violence (ADV) Questionnaire, and focus groups with young people who completed the programmes. The research element of the project has been overseen by researchers at Keele and Manchester Universities in the UK, and subject to a critical evaluation provided by the Responses to Interpersonal Violence (RIV) team at the University of Linköping. The West Midlands European Centre has contributed to the REaDAPt project by disseminating the project’s outputs. Further details of these outputs, including the REaDAPt Education Toolkit, can be found at www.readapt.eu.The key findings of the project were: Preventative programmes can secure attitude changes in young people, so that they become less accepting of domestic violence. Preventative programmes are most effective at changing attitudes if delivered over a number of weeks. Boys are generally less engaged with relationship education and domestic abuse prevention programmes than girls. One reason for this has to do with the way in which men are often represented in the materials used in such programmes; another has to do with the tendency to start with a lesson many young men claim to know already, namely that violence is wrong. Relationship education programmes do not always succeed in encouraging young people to seek help from adults. Educators delivering such programmes have a number of challenges to surmount. There are tensions between promoting gender equality and depicting violence as a gendered phenomenon. There are also tensions between encouraging young people to express and explore their own perceptions and the need to challenge sexist stereotypes and victim-blaming.REaDAPt First Evaluation Report5 Soliciting young people’s perspectives on the content and delivery of relationship education and domestic abuse prevention tuition is the key to enhancing programme effectiveness.