Comment on Porat et al. (2024): “Preventing Sexual Violence: A Behavioral Problem Without a Behaviorally Informed Solution”

There is no sugarcoating it: Porat et al. (2024) presented a damning wake-up call to the field of sexual-violence prevention. Their study’s ultimate goals were to identify psychological theories that underpin primary prevention programs, whether and how they are evidenced to lead to behavior change, and how effective the programs based on them are. The bottom line from the thorough meta-analysis is that we have spent too much attention on changing knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, which ultimately has not made a dent in sexual-violence perpetration rates. In this commentary, we provide additional thoughts on the study’s findings and expanded recommendations for future policy, practice, and research.

As evidenced by Porat et al.’s meta-analysis, the predominant approach to the primary prevention of sexual violence has been, and still is, rooted in the idea that changing beliefs and attitudes will lead to behavioral change and ultimately a reduction in sexual-assault rates. In tracing the conceptual history of prevention programs, Porat et. al identified three major eras of how this theory of change was applied and three “zeitgeist” programs that define those time periods. The three programs identified as the most salient examples of their times were absent evidence of effectiveness in reducing sexual assault.

The first era is a movement from the socially accepted idea of rape as a women’s problem and one primarily perpetrated by strangers to a focus on acquaintance rape prevention and healthy relationships. The catalyst program in this era, Safe Dates, focused largely on teen dating violence prevention, but the inclusion of measurements of sexual-violence-related outcomes as part of a randomized controlled trial made it a standout in shifting conversations about sexual violence.

The next era is a psychological shift to rape as a men’s issue and putting the onus on men to prevent rape. The defining program of this era, The Men’s Program, led to the proliferation of programs aimed at teaching men empathy for women as a means of getting them not to rape. Although this seemed like a logical idea, none of these male-focused programs showed empirical evidence of effectiveness at preventing perpetration behavior. Rather, some research has shown that empathy-building programs have iatrogenic effects, particularly for men who already subscribe to rape-supportive beliefs and attitudes. Empathy programs paint them as the bad guys, and they dig in their heels (Malamuth et al., 2018).

If our goal in primary prevention, as Porat et al. contended (and we agree), is to prevent perpetration, why did programs for men, who are the most likely perpetrators, drop off the radar? This is an empirical question. We hypothesize that one influence on the failure of these programs to progress into effective interventions may have been the changing sociopolitical tides of the time. The passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994 led to a criminal-justice system–centric model for addressing sexual violence and federal definitions that influenced policies and policing practices. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw intense public obsession with stranger-based crimes; consider the proliferation of “stranger danger” campaigns. This was compounded by a cross-sectional study by Lisak and Miller (2002) that concluded that most rapes on college campuses were perpetrated by a small group of serial rapists. In the early 2000s and continuing through, for example, the first report of the White House Council on Women and Girls (2014), this study was cited as the definitive source underpinning the belief that if we could simply weed out the bad apples on campus we would solve the rape problem. Thus, there is no need for programs geared toward the general population of men. (Note that the results of this study were empirically disproven using trajectory analysis with large national sample data sets of perpetration by college men using exploratory and confirmatory analyses; see Swartout et al., 2015.)

The third era, beginning in 2007 and continuing through today, has seen a shift away from men’s programs to bystander intervention, in which prevention is seen as everyone’s responsibility. The central idea is that victimization and perpetration will decrease if people are trained to intervene as active bystanders when they witness sexual aggression. Although programs such as Bringing in the Bystander have shown positive outcomes related to knowledge and attitudes, bystander interventions have not been documented to make a dent in reducing sexual-violence victimization experiences or perpetration on college campuses.

Next Steps in Behaviorally Based Solutions

Porat and colleagues showed qualitatively and quantitively that prevention programs have been predicated on a ideas-based approach that does not translate to behavior change. It is time for a paradigm shift, but where do we go from here? Porat and colleagues’ recommendations focused on physical space, such as characteristics that make it harder to engage in perpetration behavior, and exploring how programs that are not explicitly about sexual-violence perpetration prevention could indeed lead to that outcome.

We have long agreed with and advocated for these types of strategies as the future of sexual-violence prevention (Koss & Lopez, 2016). For example, alcohol-serving establishments are hotbeds for sexual aggression, and from a behavioral-economics standpoint, safer drinking spaces could lead to reductions in alcohol-related sex assaults. Sexual-health-education programs in middle and high schools could expand beyond teaching puberty, basic mechanics of sex, sexually transmitted infections, and pregnancy prevention to include assets-based information, including skills for how to have happy, healthy, consensual relationships and sexual interactions.

A barrier here is that content for sexual-health-education programs is largely prescriptive and based on federal-funding mandates, state statutes, and local school boards. All are outcomes of the electoral process, and the latter reflect direct citizen involvement in which minority opinion often results in nonmajority policy governing entire school systems. Because of the U.S. approach to regulating K–12 education, changing the recommended direction to include positive skill building about sex and relationships or to include violence-prevention information explicitly is a monumental and long-term task. Perhaps one strategy would instead be to flip the approach and include positive sexual-health information in sexual-assault-prevention programs. Rather than simply teach what sexual assault is and how not to perpetrate it, programs could teach practical behavioral skills for how to have enjoyable and consensual sex.

Progress will be stifled until public policy, public opinion, and funding mechanisms catch up to a shift in thinking about the fundamental assumptions of effective prevention. The reality is that most prevention programs in the United States, especially those developed and evaluated through sophisticated designs and with the longitudinal outcome measurement needed to assess behavior change, are funded through federal sources. Federal grants for prevention programming and research require that grantees utilize documented “evidence-informed” prevention practices, which are shown through this meta-analysis as ineffective at preventing perpetration, or if creating a new intervention, must include components that build on the ideas-based assumption of behavior change. The Clery Act requires that campuses provide sexual-assault-prevention programming for all incoming students; this too requires components that focus on knowledge and attitude change, as well as bystander intervention training.

The VAWA established federal funding for sexual-violence prevention and response but in doing so led to (a) funding heavily tilted toward criminal-justice response (93% of total appropriations are awarded through the U.S. Department of Justice) and (b) prevention funding that is scant in comparison (0.07%) and that has not led to measurable changes in rape perpetration (Congressional Research Service, 2023; see also White & Koss, in press). VAWA funds are distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to each state through the Rape Prevention Education (RPE) mechanism (7.5% of funding). The funds are disbursed through population-based formula grants to a designated state entity that awards monies to local organizations to implement programs—often with a list of initiatives from which to choose that comprise the demonstrated ineffective ideas-based prevention programs highlighted in the current study. The Congressional Research Service (2019) found that RPE grantee data are limited and, unsurprisingly given the results of Porat and colleagues, do not indicate evidence of effectiveness in reducing sexual assault (Sacco, 2023; see also White & Koss, in press). Changes in prevention initiatives and funding contained within the reauthorized VAWA focus on domestic violence and will govern until 2027, and funding for scientifically sound evaluations of existing and innovative VAWA-funded programs are not close to fitting current needs (0.03%).

The next 5-year RPE grant cycle begins this year. The CDC, which administers RPE funds, identified three focus areas (CDC, 2023). The first focus area, Create Protective Environments, which could include building-level and social-environmental interventions, is promising given Porat and colleagues’ findings. However, the other two focus areas are either infeasible or, according to the current study’s results, unlikely to lead to rape-prevention effects. The second focus area, Strengthen Economic Supports, is sound from an upstream intervention perspective but is untenable or out of scope for small organizations that typically implement RPE-funded programs (e.g., strengthening household financial security, microfinance, family assistance). The third focus area, Promoting Social Norms That Protect Against Violence, comprises bystander approaches and programs focused on men and boys as allies in prevention. There is little room here for innovation from the perspective of a behaviorally based theory of change.

It is time for the next era in sexual-assault prevention. The data are clear that no matter which way we have tried to make it work, programs based on the assumption that changes in knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes will prevent perpetration, to the extent behavioral outcomes are measured, evidence minimal to no change in perpetration behavior. Along with Porat and colleagues, we implore researchers, practitioners, and those in the public-policy sphere to reevaluate the basic tenets on which we build prevention programs. More funding and increased programming is for naught if the conceptual model of change is inherently flawed.