Safe Dates (OJJDP Model Program Guide)

Office of Justice Programs, Innovation - Partnerships – Safer Neighborhoods

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Serving Children, Families and Communities

PREVENTION

IMMEDIATE SANCTIONS

INTERMEDIATE SANCTIONS

RESIDENTIAL

REENTRY

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Safe Dates

Intervention:

Safe Dates is a school-based program designed to stop or prevent the initiation of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse on dates or between individuals involved in a dating relationship. Its goals are to change adolescent dating violence norms, change adolescent gender-role norms, improve conflict resolution skills for dating relationships, promote victims’ and perpetrators’ beliefs in the need for help and awareness of community resources for dating violence, promote help-seeking by victims and perpetrators, and improve peer help-giving skills. Intended for middle and high school students, the Safe Dates program can stand alone or fit easily within a health education, family, or general life-skills curriculum. Because dating violence is often tied to substance abuse, Safe Dates also may be used with drug and alcohol prevention and general violence prevention programs.

The Safe Dates program includes a curriculum with nine 50-minute sessions, a 45-minute play to be performed by students, and a poster contest. The sessions:

Defining Caring Relationships. Students are introduced to Safe Dates and discuss how they wish to be treated in dating relationships.
Defining Dating Abuse.Discussing scenarios and statistics, students clearly define what dating abuse is.
Why Do People Abuse? Students identify the causes and consequences of dating abuse through large- and small-group scenario discussions.
How to Help Friends. Students learn why it is difficult to leave abusive relationships and how to help an abused friend through a decision-making exercise and dramatic reading.
Helping Friends. Students use stories and role-playing to practice skills for helping abused friends or confronting abusing friends.
Overcoming Gender Stereotypes. Students learn about gender stereotypes and how they affect dating relationships through a writing exercise, scenarios, and small-group discussions.
Equal Power Through Communication. Students learn the eight skills for effective communication and practice them in role-plays.
How We Feel, How We Deal. Students learn effective ways to recognize and handle anger through a diary and a discussion of “hot buttons,” so that anger does not lead to abusive behavior.
Preventing Sexual Assault. Students learn about sexual assault and how to prevent it through a quiz, a caucus, and a panel of peers.

Safe Dates involves family members through its parent letter and parent brochure, which provide information about and resources for dealing with teen dating abuse. In addition, schools can get parents more involved by hosting parent education programs or by talking with parents of children who are victims or perpetrators of dating abuse. Teachers are encouraged to connect with community resources by locating and using community domestic violence and sexual assault information, products, and services that provide valid health information.

Evaluation Methodology:

Study 1
Foshee and colleagues (2005) examined five waves of data collected on a group of students participating in a quasi-experimental evaluation of the Safe Dates program reported earlier by Foshee and a different set of colleagues (1998) that was conducted during 1994 and 1995. The evaluation took place at 14 public schools that had eighth and ninth grades. The schools, which were in a primarily rural North Carolina county, were stratified by grade and matched on size. The schools in each pair were randomly assigned to a treatment or to a control condition.

In the original study, baseline measures were completed by 1,886 youths (80 percent of the 2,344 eligible participants). The sample for this review consisted of 1,566 adolescents who completed the baseline questionnaire and who were in either the control group or the Safe Dates program. Students in the original study who received Safe Dates plus a booster condition at 1 year were excluded from the longitudinal study. Of the 1,566 adolescents, 72 percent were white and 46.8 percent were male. Mean age at baseline was 13.9 years. There were 636 youths in the treatment group and 930 in the control group. The exclusion of the adolescents in the original Safe Dates group who received the booster created the imbalance between the treatment and control groups. Baseline equivalence of the groups was assessed, and no significant differences were found in outcome, mediating, or demographic variables between the treatment and control groups.

The Likert-scale questionnaires used in this evaluation were designed specifically for this study to measure four victimization and four perpetration variables. Psychological abuse perpetration was measured by asking: “During the last year how often have you done the following things to someone you had a date with?” Fourteen acts were listed (e.g., damaged something that belonged to the other person, insulted that person in front of him or her). Response options ranged from 0 (never) to 3 (very often). A parallel set of questions was used to assess psychological abuse victimization.

Eighteen additional questions were used to measure the following violence variables: moderate physical abuse (e.g., scratching, twisting partner’s arm); severe physical abuse (e.g., burning, choking, beating up); and sexual violence. Responses ranged from 0 (never) to 3 (10 or more times). Parallel questions were used to measure moderate physical abuse victimization, severe physical violence victimization and sexual dating violence.

Follow-up data was collected from treatment and controls at 1 month (wave 2), 1 year (wave 3), 2 years (wave 4), 3 years (wave 5), and 4 years (wave 6). The present evaluation reports up to wave 5 (3 years). There was a 50 percent rate of attrition from wave 1 to wave 5 but no group differences in attrition. Data missing because of attrition was handled using multiple imputation procedures. According to this procedure, sets of plausible values for missing observations are created on the basis of a specified missingness equation and an algorithm that preserves uncertainty about nonresponse.

The final data analysis was conducted using random coefficient regression analysis, which is a subset of the mixed model that is useful for longitudinal data.

Evaluation Outcome:

Study 1
Abuse Perpetration
Foshee and colleagues (2005) found significant main effects of treatment condition on psychological abuse perpetration, moderate physical violence perpetration, and sexual violence perpetration. These findings indicate that adolescents in the Safe Dates group reported perpetrating less psychological and sexual abuse at all four follow-up periods, compared with youths in the control group. The treatment group also reported perpetrating less moderate abuse than the control group. Treatment effects were the same for those who did and did not report using those forms of violence before the intervention, indicating primary and secondary prevention effects.

Treatment adolescents, who reported either no severe physical perpetration or average amounts of severe physical violence perpetration at baseline, reported significantly less severe physical violence perpetration than control subjects at the four follow-up waves. However, treatment and control adolescents who reported perpetrating severe physical violence at baseline did not differ at any of the four follow-up waves.

Abuse Victimization
There was a moderate effect of treatment on physical violence victimization in the expected direction at all four follow-up waves regardless of conditions at baseline, indicating both primary and secondary prevention effects. There was a marginal effect of treatment on sexual victimization also in the expected direction.

Other Information:

References:

Foshee, Vangie Ann, Karl E. Bauman, Ximena B. Arriaga, Russell W. Helms, Gary G. Koch, and George Fletcher Linder. 1998. “An Evaluation of Safe Dates, an Adolescent Dating Violence Prevention Program.” American Journal of Public Health 88:45–50.

Foshee, Vangie Ann, Karl E. Bauman, Susan T. Ennett, George Fletcher Linder, Thad Benefield, and Chirayath Suchindran. 2004. “Assessing the Long-Term Effects of the Safe Dates Program and a Booster in Preventing and Reducing Adolescent Dating Violence Victimization and Perpetration.” American Journal of Public Health 94(4):619–24.

Foshee, Vangie Ann, Karl E. Bauman, Wendy F. Greene, Gary G. Koch, George Fletcher Linder, and James E. MacDougall. 2000. “The Safe Dates Program: 1-Year Follow-Up Results.” American Journal of Public Health 90:1619–22.

Foshee, Vangie Ann, Karl E. Bauman, Susan T. Ennett, Chirayath Suchindran, Thad Benefield, and G. Fletcher Linder. 2005. “Assessing the Effects of the Dating Violence Prevention Program ‘Safe Dates’ Using Random Coefficient Regression Modeling.” Prevention Science 6:245–57.

Foshee, Vangie A., Karl E. Bauman, Fletcher Linder, Jennifer Rice, and Rose Wilcher. 2007. “Typologies of Adolescent Dating Violence: Identifying Typologies of Adolescent Dating Violence Perpetration. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 22(5):498–519.

Program Specification:

New Rating:

Promising

Re-reviewed Date:

June 2011

Program Type:

Classroom Curricula

Conflict Resolution / Interpersonal Skills

Parent Training

Ethnicity:

American Indian or Alaska Native

Asian

African American

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

Hispanic or Latino (of any race)

White

Other Ethnicity

Gender:

Both

Age:

11 - 17

Target Settings:

Rural

Problem Behaviors:

Sexual Activity/Exploitation

Risk & Protective Factors:

Risk

Individual

Antisocial behavior and alienation / Delinquent beliefs / General delinquency involvement / Drug dealing

Early sexual involvement

Victimization and exposure to violence

Protective

Individual

Healthy / Conventional beliefs and clear standards

Positive / Resilient temperament

Social competencies and problem solving skills

Additional Information:

SAMHSA: NREPP

Status:

Program is in operation at this time.

Performance Measures:

Suggested OJJDP Performance Measures for the Program Types(s):

Delinquency Prevention
Classroom Curricula
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
School Programs
Classroom Curricula
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
Delinquency Prevention
Parent Training
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF
Mental Health Services
Parent Training
Logic Model: PDF
Performance Matrix:PDF

Contact Information:

Program Developer:
Roxanne Schladweiler, National Education Sales Manager
Hazelden Publishing and Education Services
15251 Pleasant Valley Road
Center City, MN 55012
Phone: 6512134022
Fax: 6512134590
Email: Click Here
Website: Click Here

Training & TA Provider:
Ann Standing
Hazelden Publishing and Education Services
15251 Pleasant Valley Road
Center City, MN 55012
Phone: 8002577810
Fax: 6512134411
Email: Click Here
Website: Click Here