Program content in a men-only sexual assault prevention program: the relationship between factual knowledge, familiarity with a victim, and self-reported behavior

UnrestrictedSexual assault prevention programs are ever-present on college and university campuses today. More recently all-male prevention programs have been empirically evaluated. However, one area that has not been extensively evaluated in design is program content. Research has yet to isolate which content items are relevantly related to participants’ attitudes and behaviors.; This study is a secondary data analysis that looked at data collected from an all-male sexual assault prevention program, USC Men CARE, actively being used at a private research university. This analysis examined the relationship between factual knowledge and attitudes supportive of rape myths and behaviors associated with perpetration of participants in the all-male sexual assault prevention program. The survey of 701 male participants asked for student affiliation (i.e., fraternity, athletic teams, both, or none) and self-reported behaviors. The findings indicated that having the correct factual information about sexual assaults matter to those who are not affiliated with a particular student group (fraternities or athletic teams). Interestingly, compared to any other affiliation group the participants who claim to be athletes showed they know the correct factual information about sexual assaults, but behave in manners that are more indicative of perpetration. The results are further discussed with reference to previous studies and implications for future practice and research relevant to program administrators