Child sexual abuse prevention programs: what makes them effective in protecting children?

C hild sexual abuse prevention programs have proliferated over the past several years. Many of these program approaches, which include plays, games and videos, are visually appealing and highly entertaining, and parents and teachers have widely embraced them. However, despite the popularity of such programs, little effort has been made to evaluate their effectiveness in changing children's behavior. I As a result of participation in a sexual abuse prevention program, has a child's vulnerability to abuse been reduced, for example, or has his or her sense of personal safety been enhanced? Early childhood educators, parents and others involved in selecting and conducting child sexual abuse prevention programs should also be concerned about such questions as: • Is there a measurable difference in the ability to demonstrate prevention skills between children who have been exposed to previous prevention efforts and those who have not? • Are communities, feeling confident that they have addressed the issue of child abuse, making any significant contribution to the personal safety of their children? • What elements of programming are responsible for producing the desired prevention skills? • Is it necessary to give children explicit information about child abuse in order to achieve the desired level of prevention? • Does the program have negative side effects-such as fear or anxiety--of which we remain unaware'? • At what age do children learn prevention skills most effectively? Many professionals and organizations, such as the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, have strongly urged more stringent criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of prevention programs. As researcher J .M. Leventhal notes: "[ the J ultimate goal of any program to prevent sexual abuse is to teach behaviors so that when an adult makes a sexual advance toward a child, the child will act in an appropriate manner by saying no and telling a responsible adult what happened. Yet none of the evaluative efforts has examined this direct outcome. Instead, a change in knowledge, which is really an intermediate measure, has been examined without any evidence that such a change is linked to changes in behavior ... Does a change of two points on a 20-point questionnaire about child protection mean that the child is 10 percent more likely to protect himor herself? Obviously not."2 In order to protect children, educators and parents need to know what works. Equally important, they need to know how to accomplish this end without compromising the children's emotional well-being. Without this level of evaluation and accountability, resulting in more progressive and reliable programs, child abuse prevention programs will continue to be used without any clear understanding of their effectiveness or impact. In 1987, the Coalition for Children, Inc., a Hot-for-profit organization involved in curriculum development and evaluation, received a grant from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect to evaluate the actual reduction of risk for child abuse that could be attributed to a school-based prevention program. The project focused on measuring the behavioral skills associated with prevention of victimization before and after participation in the Safe Child Personal Safety Training Program. a standardized, scripted, videotape curriculum that provides training for teachers,