A Text Message Intervention to Increase Awareness of Sexual Assault on Campus

Sexual assault on college campuses is an important problem for the college community. In order to increase awareness in college students about this problem, a randomized 4-week text message campaign was implemented in the University of Rhode Island’s Psychology 113 class. To analyze the impact of the intervention, two-sample t-tests were conducted on the variables of interest. Results showed no significant impact of the campaign on two measures of awareness, Gender-Specific Barriers to Bystander Behavior Items (Burns, 2009) and College Date Rape Attitude Survey (Lanier & Green, 2006). When measuring the impact conditional on demographics, the results remain the same. These results can inform educator, policy makers, college students and other member of the college community about the limitations of this type of intervention