Barbara Ball

Expect Respect support groups, a selective prevention strategy, are designed to prevent and reduce dating violence among at-risk middle and high school students. This preliminary, uncontrolled evaluation examined changes in healthy relationship skills and emotionally and physically abusive behaviors in participants’ peer and dating relationships. Self-reports (N = 144) showed significant increases in healthy relationship skills from baseline to program completion, whereas levels of victimization and perpetration remained unchanged. A subgroup of students who reported baseline levels of victimization and perpetration with means at least one standard deviation above the group mean reported significantly less victimization and perpetration at program completion.

Expect Respect, a teen dating violence prevention program, was among four programs selected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to participate in an empowerment evaluation project. As one aspect of this project, a qualitative study was designed to investigate the effects of Expect Respect support groups for at-risk youth. The goal was to understand the “how and why” of the program's impact on participants. Group interviews were conducted with five boys' and five girls' support groups after completion of the program. Settings included public middle and high schools and alternative schools in juvenile detention. Participants were asked to describe significant learning experiences in support groups as well as changes in their relationships resulting from program participation. Youths across all groups reported learning new skills including improved communication, anger control, and alternatives to violence. They reported increased knowledge about healthy relationships and warning signs of dating violence and expanded awareness of their own and others' abusive behaviors. Changed relationship norms were uniquely expressed by a boys' group in juvenile detention. Findings indicate that the experience of emotional safety in groups and positive relationships among group members were instrumental in the learning process.