Rape Prevention and Risk Reduction: Review of the Research Literature for Practitioners

Kimberly A. Lonsway, Victoria L. Banyard, Alan D. Berkowitz, Christine A. Gidycz, Jackson T. Katz, Mary P. Koss, Paul A. Schewe, and Sarah E. Ullman With contributions from Dorothy Edwards

For many professionals working in the field of sexual assault, one of the most pressing questions is: ""What can we do to prevent it?"" Practitioners have been designing and implementing rape prevention programs for decades, and researchers have been evaluating them for almost as long. The purpose of this article is to summarize the answers we have so far, because the good news is that we have learned some important lessons along the way regarding the prevention of adult and adolescent sexual assault. (The prevention of child sexual abuse will not be addressed in this article). For the purposes of this review, the terms ""rape"" and ""sexual assault"" will be used interchangeably.

However, it won't take long for many readers to realize that there are far more questions than answers. The second purpose of this article is to provide concrete guidance for practitioners on how to design, implement, and evaluate rape prevention programs in the real world where we don't have all the answers from research conducted so far.

In recent years, several resource materials have been published to provide guidance for researchers and practitioners on sexual violence prevention.

For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a document in 2004 entitled Sexual Violence Prevention: Beginning the Dialogue.
Similarly, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center published Sexual Violence and the Spectrum of Prevention: Towards a Community Solution (Davis, Parks, & Cohen, 2006).
Both of these documents provide an overview for a comprehensive approach to prevention for practitioners, including detailed examples of interventions at various levels of influence (e.g., individual, interpersonal, community, societal). The CDC report also offers guidance for agencies to determine which components may best meet their organizational mission, goals, and resources. These documents can help practitioners to carefully think through their prevention strategy and understand where a particular intervention might fit within the larger picture. They can also help practitioners to identify specific goals for interventions that are targeted at different levels of influence and time points when prevention activities can occur. Many people believe that this type of an integrated approach is the most likely to create and sustain changes in broader societal norms.