Preventing Sexual Violence Through Bystander Intervention: Attitudes, Behaviors, Missed Opportunities, and Barriers to Intervention Among Australian University Students

Abstract

The concept of bystander intervention is gaining popularity in universities as a mechanism to prevent sexual violence. Prior research has focused on correlates of bystanders' intentions to intervene and intervention behaviors in situations where there is a risk of sexual violence. The current study builds on this literature by exploring the nature of missed opportunities, including perceived barriers to intervention. In all, 380 Australian undergraduate university students completed an online survey. Measures included a rape myth acceptance scale, bystander intentions to intervene, actual intervention behaviors, missed opportunities for intervention, and perceived barriers for missed opportunities. Promisingly, students reported high levels of intentions to intervene in situations where there was a risk of sexual violence and reported relatively few missed opportunities to do so when these situations did occur. Intervention behaviors varied by important demographic characteristics such as gender, age, attitudes toward sexual violence, and the nature of the situation. Younger female students, with lower levels of rape myth acceptance, who had previously engaged in bystander intervention behaviors were more likely to report intentions to intervene in future risky situations, and female international students reported fewer missed opportunities for intervention. The most common barrier to intervention for identified missed opportunities was a failure to recognize situations as having a potential risk for sexual violence, and students were most likely to intervene in situations when the opportunity to help a friend in distress arose. This study provides some preliminary empirical evidence about bystander intervention against sexual violence among Australian university students, and identifies unique contexts for intervention and what current barriers to intervention may be.

Second-Order Sexual Harassment: Violence Against the Silence Breakers Who Support the Victims

“…We are faced with the following question: How do individuals who witness or have knowledge of an incident involving gender violence react? We have found several studies (Burn, 2009;Kania & Cale, 2018;Katz et al, 2015) grounded in the research conducted by Latane and Darley (1970) that describe possible witness reactions and the barriers that determine whether a bystander will intervene. These studies analyze bystander reactions to dangerous situations in general.…”

“…Knowledge about gender violence is also associated with whether the individual has a friend who has been a victim of this type of violence and whether the individual in question has received gender violence training (Banyard, 2008;Kania & Cale, 2018;Katz et al, 2015;Powers & Leili, 2017). In recent years, the spread of programs that promote bystander intervention (such as Green Dot, TakeCARE, or BarTAB) has often been accompanied by an evaluation of such programs.…”

“…However, intervention is less likely when the bystander is friends with the person who is committing the violent act. In such cases, the bystander is both less likely to intervene on the victim's behalf and less likely to tell the attacker to stop (Kania & Cale, 2018;Liebst et al, 2018).…”

University student attitudes to prosocial bystander behaviours

“…The UK is not alone in this situation. There are initiatives to understand the student experience, and reduce the incidence of sexual assault and harassment in Australia, New Zealand, and the USA universities, using whole campus approaches (Australian Human Rights Commission, AHRC, 2017; Kania and Cale, 2018;Snowden, 2018;Beres et al, 2019;Kettrey and Marx, 2019), UK universities have attempted to address students' lack of knowledge by running workshops.…”

“…Fenton et al (2016) propose that bystander programmes should enable a witness to recognise the target behaviours, to interpret incidents as problematic, assume responsibility, and know how best to act. Indeed Kania and Cale (2018) identified failure to recognise situations as having potential for sexual violence as the reasons for Australian students to miss an opportunity to help one another.…”