Abstract
Sexual violence (SV) is pervasive and economically burdensome in the USA. According to the CDC, SV prevention could avert $122,461 in costs per victim of rape, totaling an estimated $3.1 trillion. Coaching Boys into Men (CBIM) is an evidence-based dating abuse and SV prevention program found to reduce dating abuse and SV perpetration among male high school athletes and dating abuse among middle school athletes. This secondary data analysis of CBIM’s high school (N = 1520) and middle school (N = 973) RCTs estimated the incidence of dating abuse, sexual harassment, and sexual assault that CBIM could prevent as well as the potential cost savings. Ten items measured dating abuse, with a subset measuring sexual assault and sexual harassment, among participants who had ever dated a female. Perpetration measures were dichotomized as present or absent. Maximum likelihood estimates of Poisson-distributed event rates allowed for possible multiple incidents of perpetration per athlete. Among high school athletes, CBIM was associated with a relative reduction of 85 incidents of dating abuse (95%CI 24, 146), 48 incidents of sexual harassment (95%CI 3.8, 92), and 20 incidents of sexual assault (95%CI 1.7, 38) per 1,000 athletes. Results among middle school athletes demonstrated similar, albeit non-significant, trends. Based on the reduction of sexual assaults among high school athletes alone, CBIM may have resulted in $2.4 million reduction in costs per 1000 athletes exposed. CBIM may be associated with significant sexual assault-related cost reductions. Given the low costs and time needed to implement the program, sexual and dating violence prevention programs like CBIM may result in substantial economic benefits.
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Acknowledgments
The views expressed in this manuscript are solely the responsibility of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the United Way. Ongoing evaluation and dissemination of CBIM in southwestern PA is funded by the United Way.
Funding
The original studies were funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CE001561-01, RO1CEOO2543).
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the original study.
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This retrospective study did not require additional ethical approval.
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Funders had no role in the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to submit for publication.
Trial Registration
These studies are registered at https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/NCT01367704 (June 7, 2011) and NCT02331238 (January 6, 2015). Approved by University of California, Davis and University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Boards.
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Jones, K.A., Tancredi, D.J., Abebe, K.Z. et al. Cases of Sexual Assault Prevented in an Athletic Coach-Delivered Gender Violence Prevention Program. Prev Sci 22, 504–508 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-021-01210-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-021-01210-1