High School Students’ Perceptions of School Personnel’s Intentions to Help Prevent Teen Sexual and Dating Violence: Associations with Attitudes and Intended Behaviors *

Abstract

Adolescents are at high risk for sexual and dating violence (SDV) at school, indicating need for both adolescents and school personnel to engage in bystander behavior to prevent SDV. Adolescents’ perceptions of social norms about bystander behavior, including their perceptions about social norms among school personnel, may impact adolescents’ own SDV attitudes and intended bystander behavior. Based on social norms theory, the current research examines adolescents who underestimate, accurately perceive, and overestimate school personnel’s reactive (responding to a current situation) and proactive (spreading messaging about prevention) bystander behaviors. High school students (N = 3,404; mean age = 15.7; 87.2% White; 87% heterosexual) and school personnel (N = 1,150) from 25 schools completed surveys. Adolescents who underestimated school personnel’s reactive and proactive bystander behavior had more accepting attitudes towards violence and less bystander behavior intentions. Correcting misperceived norms about bystander behavior may improve students’ own bystander behavior.

Keywords

bystander sexual violence dating violence prevention social norms

Teen sexual and dating violence (SDV) is a national problem, particularly among adolescents, who are at a higher risk for SDV victimization than other age groups (Wincentak et al., 2017). SDV victimization is associated with myriad negative effects on adolescents’ social, psychological, and academic development (Banyard & Cross, 2008; Exner-Cortens et al., 2013). During adolescence, peers become more salient and adolescents spend increasing amounts of time with friends and other peers (Connolly et al., 2004; Rubin et al., 2006). Given the high risk of SDV among adolescents and increasing time spent with peers, adolescents are often witnesses, or bystanders, to SDV among peers (Banyard & Moynihan, 2011). Research is also increasingly recognizing the important role that school personnel play in preventing SDV. School personnel can model antiviolence attitudes and positive bystander behaviors in situations of teen SDV (Edwards et al., 2017). New directions for preventing SDV perpetration among adolescents include engaging students and school personnel in positive bystander behavior, and changing social norms about violence (DeGue et al., 2014).

Importance of Bystander Education and School Personnel in Prevention.

The positive behavior of bystanders, or witnesses to situations of SDV, is a key piece to SDV prevention. Bystanders can respond before, during, or after situations of SDV, such as removing a potential victim from a situation at high risk of sexual violence or telling an adult about dating violence that has already occurred. This type of behavior is known as reactive bystander behavior. Bystanders can also act proactively, such as by sharing anti-SDV messaging on a social media platform (McMahon & Banyard, 2012). Programs that train community members to respond positively in situations of SDV have proliferated on college campuses and are increasing in popularity in high schools, particularly to prevent bullying (Edwards et al., 2019; Kettrey & Marx, 2019; Polanin et al., 2012; Storer et al., 2015). These programs emphasize that everyone in a community has a role to play in preventing violence and that adolescents and young adults can learn a variety of skills to help them effectively intervene to prevent SDV among their peers (Edwards et al., 2019; Kettrey & Marx, 2019; Polanin et al., 2012; Storer et al., 2015).

The important role of bystanders is further highlighted by the fact that SDV often occurs at school (Finkelhor et al., 2016). For example, up to 39% of sexual assaults (including unwanted kissing, hugging, sexual touching, oral sex, attempted or completed rape) happen at school (Young et al., 2009), 72% of sexual harassment occurs at school (Turner et al., 2011), and almost 28% of dating violence incidents occurs at school (Turner et al., 2011). Thus, school personnel (i.e., school staff including but not limited to teachers) are important bystanders (Edwards et al., 2017; Eldridge & Jenkins, 2019; Wood et al., 2017). In fact, adolescents tend to believe that school personnel have more power to intervene and have more expertise in strategies to intervene in situations of bullying and dating violence, compared to themselves (Storer et al., 2017). Despite the importance of school personnel intervention in preventing SDV, school personnel perceive barriers to bystander intervention including concerns about the negative impact of intervening and lacking time and ability to intervene (Edwards et al., 2017), and thus, do not always help in situations of SDV.

Social Norms, Attitudes, and Bystander Behavior

Social norms about violence are an important predictor of violence in a community, including among adolescents (Banyard, 2011; Beckmann et al., 2019; Berkowitz, 2005). Social norms are unwritten rules for behavior that impact an individual’s behavior (i.e., individuals seek to engage in behaviors consistent with what they perceive to be acceptable and expected by the group which they are part of). Research shows that individuals often overestimate negative norms (e.g., violence perpetration) and underestimate positive norms (e.g., bystander intervention; Berkowitz, 2010). According to social norms theory, individuals who overestimate descriptive norms about violence are more likely to act violently, whereas individuals who overestimate or accurately estimate positive behaviors are more likely to enact those same helpful behaviors (Berkowitz, 2005, 2010). Indeed, previous research suggests that individuals who act as positive bystanders have greater perceptions of community descriptive norms that favor helping to prevent SDV (Edwards et al., 2014), and some programming for college students has sought to increase positive social norms about bystander behavior (Gidycz et al., 2011). However, the impact of adolescents’ perceptions of school personnel’s intended bystander behavior in situations of SDV on adolescents’ own attitudes and behaviors is unknown.

Adolescents tend to intervene in situations of SDV when they have a supportive relationship with school staff and can be hindered from helping by school climate variables such as perceptions that schools do not take student dating violence seriously (Debnam & Mauer, 2019). Debnam and Maurer also discuss the importance of adolescents’ perceptions of school personnel’ intentions to intervene. Adolescents’ perceptions of school personnel’s intended behavior may impact adolescents’ own intended behavior. For example, studies of bullying among middle school-aged students showed that school personnel attitudes and behaviors affect student bullying but also helpful bystander behavior (Veenstra et al., 2014), and Johnson et al. showed how aspects of school physical and social environments affect student attitudes and, indirectly, their participation in violent incidents including bringing a weapon, physical fighting, and bullying (Johnson et al., 2017). This work suggests that more research on social norms and indicators of school environment is needed.

In addition, social norms about school personnel may impact adolescents’ attitudes that are associated with subsequent intended bystander behavior. The situational-cognitive model is used to understand key attitudinal variables associated with adolescent bystander behavior. Key components of this model are recognition of the problem of dating violence and the denial of common myths about SDV, feeling responsibility and readiness to help, and having positive attitudes towards helping. This model also highlights attitudes related to efficacy to act and perceived barriers to helping (Casey et al., 2016). Related to sense of responsibility, youth often express that adults should be the ones to step in to help (Casey et al., 2016; Storer et al., 2017), showing the importance of school personnel attitudes.

The Current Article

Based on social norms theory and research describing the importance of school personnel’s bystander behavior, in the current article we examine adolescents’ perceptions of school personnel’s intended bystander behavior. Social norms theory describes how individuals who overestimate or accurately estimate positive behaviors are more likely to enact those same behaviors (Berkowitz, 2005, 2010). Thus, we compare adolescents’ estimations to school personnel’s behavioral intentions, as reported by school personnel at their school. The theory of planned behavior suggest that behavioral intentions are a key factor in actual behavior (Ajzen, 1991), and meta-analyses suggest that intentions account for significant variability in actual behaviors (Sutton, 1998). Thus, we focus on adolescents’ and school personnel’s behavioral intentions.

Aim 1 was to identify the frequency at which adolescents underestimate, accurately perceive, or overestimate school personnel’s reactive (behavior in response to an SDV situation) and proactive (behavior meant to prevent SDV in absence of a situation) bystander behavioral intentions to prevent SDV, as well as the magnitude of these estimations. Based on the situational-cognitive model (Casey et al., 2016), we also examine various attitudes associated with bystander intentions. Aim 2 (reactive norms) and Aim 3 (proactive norms) were to compare underestimators to accurate perceivers and overestimators on SDV-related attitudes, perceptions of peer helping, and intended reactive and proactive bystander behavior. Specifically, we hypothesized that compared to accurate perceivers and overestimators, underestimators would report more adherence to rape myths, more barriers to helping, less positive attitudes towards helping, more denial of responsibility, less perceptions of student helping, and less intended reactive and proactive bystander behavior. The current article builds on social norms theory by describing social norms about school personnel and focusing on norms about positive intended helping behavior, whereas most research on social norms is about peers and about negative behavior like acceptability of using coercion or using sexist language (Berkowitz, 2010). We also expect that the findings will also have practical implications for changing bystander norms to prevent SDV in schools.

Methods

Participants

Participants were 3,404 high school students from 25 schools in northern New England who participated in the baseline survey as part of a cluster randomized control trial to evaluate a bystander-focused violence prevention curriculum. The starting sample was 4,069, but we removed 665 cases (16.34%) due to an inability to match surveys across time points (n = 625, 15.36%; which would mean that a single participant would be in the dataset as different participant across time points), mischievous responders (n = 31, 0.76%; e.g., wrote in impossible demographics [e.g., age 3], wrote or drew lewd comments and figures, etc.) and/or extreme (n = 6, 0.15%; e.g., indicated the highest possible response on all items for two or more measures, answering yes to every victimization/perpetration question, saying they intervened every time, etc.), and/or transferring from a treatment to control school or vice versa (n = 3, 0.07%; and thus concerns about contamination).

Thus, among the 3,404 participants, the mean age of participants at baseline was 15.7 (range 13–19, SD = 1.2). About one-third (31.2%) of the sample was in 9th grade, 32.6% was in 10th grade, 20.2% was in 11th grade, and 15.9% was in 12th grade. Half of students were girls/women (51.5%). Most participants identified as White (87.2%), and heterosexual (87.0%). Approximately one in five (20.8%) students reported receiving free or reduced lunch, a proxy for poverty. The sample did not differ on indicators of gender, race, and free/reduced lunch from the overall student body from the schools in which participants were sampled (collected from the respective departments of education; Maine Department of Education, 2015; Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2017; New Hampshire Department of Education, 2010).

We also surveyed school personnel across the 25 schools. Participants were 1,150 high school personnel from 25 schools in northern New England. The mean age of participants was 44.47 years (range = 18–78, SD = 11.81). The majority of participants identified as girls/women (68.6%) and White (96.6%). The sample was comprised of academic subject teachers (49.0%), academic support staff (23.5%), special education teachers (8.1%), counselors/social workers (7.2%), administrative support (4.8%), physical education teachers and coaches (2.2%), administrators (2.1%), facility support (1.8%), and nurses (1.1%), and “other” (0.2%). On average, school personnel had worked at the school for 9.62 years (range = 0.08–45.00 years, SD = 8.32 years). The school personnel in our sample from did not differ on gender from the overall school personnel from the schools in which participants were sampled. However, the sample did differ on race such that the school personnel in our sample had a higher proportion of White participants compared to the overall school personnel (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; New Hampshire Department of Education, 2017). Of note, the state of Maine does not collect demographic information regarding school personnel. Therefore, analyses only reflect representativeness of school personnel in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Procedures

In regard to the student survey, following institutional review board approval, guardians of students under the age of 18 and in selected classrooms (e.g., health, physical education) were sent an opt-out form with information on the project and how to withdraw their child if they did not want their child to participate. Students under the age of 18 were only eligible to participate if a guardian did not withdraw them via opt out consent procedures. Students who were 18 or 19 years old (7.9%) provided their own consent to participate, and students under 18 who were eligible to participate read an assent form to decide if they would like to complete the surveys. The majority (89.7%) of invited students participated in the current study. A paper-and-pencil survey that took about 30 minutes to complete was provided in English only and was completed by students during the regular school hours.

In regard to the school personnel survey, following institutional review board approval, a high school administrator sent out an email from the principal investigator (PI) describing the study and inviting school personnel to participate. The PI also requested that school administrators: (a) include a brief statement prior to the PI’s recruitment email encouraging school personnel to complete the survey, (b) send a reminder email to school personnel a few weeks after the initial request was sent, and (c) make an announcement about the survey at staff and faculty meetings. Additionally, fliers advertising the study were posted in different areas of the school (e.g., staff lounge, mailroom) where school personnel frequented. All recruitment messages contained a link to the online Qualtrics survey that took about 30 minutes to complete. Forty-one percent of the school personnel who were invited at any time point completed the baseline survey. Following the completion of the survey, participants were provided with a list of resources to learn more about relationship abuse and sexual assault, as well as information on how to get help personally for these issues. Finally, school personnel participants had the opportunity to enter their name into a raffle for the chance to win one of two $200 gift cards.

Measures

Student and school personnel measures.

Perceptions of school personnel helping.

Based on previous research with high school students and high school personnel (Edwards et al., 2015), we created a measure to assess students’ perceptions of how likely school personnel are to intervene in situations of teen SDV. The Perceptions of School Personnel Helping Scale (PSPHS) included nine items (e.g., “About how many staff at your school would verbally tell a dating couple who is in a physical fight to stop fighting?”; “Talk to teens about how to have healthy relationships”; “Try to get help for a teen who is being sexually, physically, or psychologically abusive towards another teen”; “Tell a group of boys who are referring to girls as ‘sluts,’ ‘whores,’ or some other similar terms to stop talking about girls like that”). Students were told that school staff included “anybody who works at your high school including teachers, coaches, administrators, counselors and social workers, custodial and cafeteria personnel, bus drivers, etc.” Response options ranged from 1 (no school staff) to 4 (all school staff). Higher scores on each subscale indicate higher levels of students’ perceptions in how likely school personnel are to intervene.

School personnel were also surveyed. They were given a parallel set of items but were asked about their own individual likelihood as school staff to perform various bystander behaviors. The Bystander Intent to Help Questionnaire—School Personnel was based on previous research with high school students and high school personnel (Edwards et al., 2015), and consisted of 10 items (e.g., “How likely would you be to comfort a teen who is a victim of relationship abuse or sexual assault?”). Response options range from 1 (very unlikely) to 4 (very likely). Factor analyses of the seven items suggested there were two distinct factors or subscales: Proactive Bystander Intentions (Cronbach’s alpha = .79) and Reactive Bystander Intentions (Cronbach’s alpha = .65). Items on each subscale are summed such that higher scores reflect higher levels of intentions to intervene. For the purposes of analyses presented here, school average school personnel intentions were created for each of the 25 schools by computing the mean of school staff responses for that school.

For the purposes of the current analyses, three different scores were created to capture facets of social norms perceptions of school personnel by students. First, a difference score was created by subtracting the z-score of each student’s perceptions of school personnel’s intent to help from the average of school personnel responses about intent to help in that student’s school. This was done separately for reactive and proactive behaviors in keeping with the bystander behavior measures described above. The mean raw score for reactive school personnel intent was 21.66 (.41) and the mean for proactive was 6.64 (.26). The mean raw score for students’ perceptions of reactive bystander behavior was 16.50 (3.91) and the mean for students’ perceptions of proactive bystander behavior was 5.78 (1.54). In keeping with work by Perkins et al. (Perkins, Nyakato, et al., 2018; Perkins, Perkins, et al., 2018; Perkins et al., 2015), we then created scores to indicate student misperceptions that included magnitude of misperception and the direction of misperception (with negative scores indicating underestimation of positive school personnel intentions and positive scores indicating overestimation of school personnel intent). To explore both magnitude and direction we created three groups: (a) “underestimators” who scored below 1 standard deviation; (b) “accurate perceivers” who scored 0 +- 1.46; and (c) “overestimators” who scored greater than 1 SD above 0. A second scoring focused only on the direction of the misperception, the differences scores were dichotomized with “1” corresponding to those with scores below 0 (underestimators based on difference) and “0” for those with difference scores at 0 or above (over estimators based on difference). A third score for misperceptions, also following Perkins et al., focused only on the magnitude of the misperception. It was calculated as the absolute value of the difference scores, or how far apart the student was from the school personnel average in their school regardless of whether the student overestimated or underestimated.

Student measures

Rape myth acceptance.

We used a shortened version (Coker, Cook-Craig, Williams, Fisher, Clear, Garcia, et al., 2011; Coker, Cook-Craig, Williams, Fisher, Clear, Hegge, et al., 2011; Cook-Craig, 2012) of the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMAS; Payne et al., 1999) to assess students’ agreement with rape myths. The IRMAS-Short Form (IRMAS-SF) consists of six items (e.g., “When girls are sexually assaulted, it is often because the way they said ‘no’ was unclear.”). Response options range from 1 (disagree strongly) to 4 (agree strongly). Factor analyses suggested that the six items represented two distinct factors or subscales: Traditional Gender Expectations (Cronbach’s alpha = .78) and Rape Denial (Cronbach’s alpha = .73). Items are summed so that higher scores on either subscale indicated higher levels of rape myth acceptance.

Barriers to and attitudes towards helping.

The Pros and Cons of Bystander Action Scale (PCBAS) was created for the purposes of this project to assess students’ perceptions of pros and cons of bystander behavior in situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault. To create this measure, we borrowed items from the Decisional Balance Scale (Banyard, 2013). We also added barriers and facilitators of bystander behavior that were identified in a previously conducted qualitative study (Edwards et al., 2015). The PCBAS includes eight items (e.g., “I might get made fun of or picked on if I help.) Response options range from 1 (disagree strongly) to 4 (agree strongly). Factor analyses of the eight items suggested that there are two distinct factors or subscales: Barriers to Helping (Cronbach’s alpha = .76) and Positive Attitudes Towards Helping (Cronbach’s alpha = .63). The items are summed such that higher scores on the Barriers to Helping subscale indicate higher levels of perceived barriers or consequences for engaging in bystander behaviors. Higher scores on Positive Attitudes Towards Helping indicated higher levels of positive feelings towards engaging in bystander behaviors.

Bystander readiness-denial.

We used the Denial subscale of the Readiness to Help Scale (D-RHS; Banyard et al., 2014) to assess the extent to which students rejected the role that they could play in preventing relationship abuse and sexual assault. The D-RHS consisted of four items (e.g., “There is not much need for me to think about relationship abuse and/or sexual assault among high school students.”) Response options ranged from 1 (disagree strongly) to 4 (agree strongly). Items are summed so that higher numbers are indicative of higher denial of responsibility in situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault. Cronbach’s alpha was .69.

Perceptions of peer helping.

Based on our knowledge of the community readiness and social norms literature, we created a three-item scale to assess students’ perceptions of their peer’s attitudes towards helping in situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault. The response options for items (e.g., “It is important to students at this school to try to stop relationship abuse and sexual assault from happening”) on the Peers Perceptions of Helping Scale (PPHS) range from 1 (disagree strongly) to 4 (agree strongly). This measure was adapted from previous research with college students (Brown et al., 2014) and has been used successfully in other research projects with high school students (Banyard et al., 2020). Items are summed such that higher scores indicate more positive perceptions of peers helping in situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault. Cronbach’s alpha was .51.

Bystander intentions.

The Bystander Intent to Help Questionnaire (BIHQ; Cook-Craig et al., 2014) was used to capture students’ intention to intervene in situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault. The BIHQ consisted of nine items (e.g., “How likely would you be to talk to a friend who was being physically hurt by a boyfriend/girlfriend?”) Response options range from 1 (very unlikely) to 4 (very likely). Factor analyses suggested that the nine items represent two distinct factors or subscales: Reactive Bystander Intentions (Cronbach’s alpha = .83) and Proactive Bystander Intentions (Cronbach’s alpha = .78). Items were summed such that higher scores on the Reactive Bystander Intentions subscale indicate higher intentions to respond to situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault. Additionally, high scores on the Proactive Bystander Intentions indicate higher intentions to engage in behaviors that would help prevent situations of relationship abuse and sexual assault from occurring.

Analysis Plan

Thus, to address Aim 1, we conducted descriptive statistics that identified the frequency of student underestimators, accurate perceivers, and overestimators (based on standard deviation) for both reactive and proactive bystander behaviors (the groups were among students, using school personnel responses at their school to define the groups). Similarly, we identified the frequency of underestimators and overestimators based on difference. We also identified the mean magnitude of misperceptions. To address Aims 2 and 3, we ran a series of multiple regression analyses using STATA’s REGRESS command. The underestimator, accurate perceiver, and overestimator groups were dummy coded so that, consistent with our hypothesis, underestimators were the reference group. Covariates were gender (reference category was boy/man), race (reference category was White non-Hispanic), sexual orientation (reference category was sexual minority), poverty (reference category was received free/reduced lunch), and age. Previous studies on bystander behavior have used these covariates, and we wanted to isolate the unique impact of our attitudinal variables on the extent to which students were accurate perceivers (e.g., Edwards et al., 2019; Waterman et al., 2020). We handled missing data via chained multiple imputation. Due to the high number of tests, we choose the more conservative p-value of <.001 to denote significance.

Given that the students were clustered within school, we considered using multilevel models in the analysis. However, students’ status as underestimators, accurate perceivers, and overestimators already account for their school membership. In addition, we explored the intraclass correlation (ICC) for school for each of our outcomes; ICCs ranged from .01–.07; ICCs close to zero mean that values from the same group (e.g., students in the same school) are not similar.

Results

Aim 1

Because we used standard deviation to mark cutoffs for underestimators, accurate perceivers, and overestimators, approximately 68% of adolescents were accurate perceivers, just over 15% were underestimators, and just over 15% were overestimators. We then examined groups as underestimators and overestimators only (i.e., not having an accurate perceivers group). For reactive norms, approximately 50% of adolescents were underestimators and approximately 50% were overestimators. For proactive norms, approximately 55% of adolescents were underestimators and approximately 45% of adolescents were overestimators. We provide the mean perceptions of school personnel’s intentions in Table 1. The average magnitude of misperceptions (using absolute value) was 1.15 for both reactive and proactive norms.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics Depicting Student Underestimators, Accurate Perceivers, and Overestimators (N = 2,849).

	Group Membership Frequency When Split into Three Groups Based on Standard Deviation
	Underestimators	Accurate Perceivers	Overestimators
Reactive norms (%)	15.90	68.34	15.76
Proactive norms (%)	16.20	67.83	15.96
	Mean and Range of Perceptions of School Personnel When Split into Three Groups
	Underestimators	Accurate Perceivers	Overestimators
Reactive norms	11.87 (6.00–18.50)	16.68 (6.00–24.00)	20.41 (14.00–24.00)
Proactive norms	3.93 (2.00–6.00)	5.85 (2.00–8.00)	7.35 (4.00–8.00)
	Group Membership Frequency When Split into Two Groups Based on Difference
	Underestimators (Less than 0)		Overestimators (Greater or Equal to 0)
Reactive norms (%)	49.39		50.61
Proactive norms (%)	55.22		44.78
	Mean and Range of Perceptions of School Personnel When Split into Two Groups
	Underestimators (Less than 0)		Overestimators (Greater or Equal to 0)
Reactive norms	14.26 (6.00–24.00)		18.79 (8.00–24.00)
Proactive norms	4.68 (2.00–8.00)		6.67 (2.00–8.00)
	Average Magnitude of Misperceptions
	Mean (SD)
Reactive norms	1.15 (0.89)
Proactive norms	1.15 (0.90)

Note. Percentages are valid, meaning they do not include students for whom we could not calculate a difference score due to missing data.

Aim 2

Consistent with hypotheses for reactive norms, underestimators significantly differed from accurate perceivers and overestimators on rape myths, attitudes towards helping, denial of responsibility, perceptions of student helping, and intended reactive and proactive bystander behavior. The effects were in the hypothesized direction. Underestimators reported higher rape myths for gender expectations, and less positive attitudes towards helping, lower perceptions of student helping, lower intended reactive bystander behavior, and lower intended proactive bystander behavior, compared to accurate perceivers. Also in the hypothesized direction, underestimators reported more rape myths about gender expectations, rape myth denial, and denial of responsibility, and less positive attitudes towards helping, perceptions of student helping, and intended reactive and proactive bystander behavior, compared to overestimators.

Aim 3

Consistent with hypotheses for proactive norms, underestimators significantly differed from accurate perceivers and overestimators on rape myths, barriers to helping, attitudes towards helping, perceptions of student helping, and intended reactive and proactive bystander behavior. The effects were in the hypothesized direction. Underestimators reported less positive attitudes towards helping, perceptions of student helping, and intended reactive bystander behavior, compared to accurate perceivers. Also in the hypothesized direction, underestimators reported more rape myths about gender expectations, rape myth denial, and denial of responsibility, and less positive attitudes towards helping, perceptions of student helping, and intended reactive bystander behavior, compared to overestimators.

Given the impact of gender on SDV, we conducted exploratory analyses to determine if gender moderated the analyses in Table 2 or Table 3. No moderators were significant at the conservative p-value of <.001 that we discuss in the analysis plan.

Table 2.

Regression Analyses Comparing Student Underestimators to Accurate Perceivers and Overestimators: Reactive Norms.

	Coefficient	Std Error	P-value	Lower 95% CI	Upper 95% CI
Rape Myths: Gender Expectations
Accurate perceiver	–0.309	0.068	<.001	–0.442	–0.176
Overestimator	–0.426	0.087	<.001	–0.598	–0.255
Rape Myths: Denial
Accurate perceiver	–0.151	0.095	.111	–0.337	0.035
Overestimator	–0.486	0.122	<.001	–0.726	–0.245
Barriers to Helping
Accurate perceiver	–0.072	0.138	.600	–0.343	0.198
Overestimator	–0.390	0.176	.027	–0.735	–0.0444625
Positive Attitudes Towards Helping
Accurate perceiver	0.404	0.068	<.001	0.270	0.539
Overestimator	0.900	0.088	<.001	0.728	1.072202
Denial of Responsibility
Accurate perceiver	–0.218	0.103	.034	–0.420	–0.017
Overestimator	–0.655	0.131	<.001	–0.913	–0.398
Perceptions of Student Helping
Accurate perceiver	0.395	0.072	<.001	0.253	0.537
Overestimator	0.857	0.093	<.001	0.675	1.040
Intended Reactive Bystander Behavior
Accurate perceiver	0.848	0.172	<.001	0.512	1.185
Overestimator	1.360	0.220	<.001	0.929	1.790
Intended Proactive Bystander Behavior
Accurate perceiver	0.363	0.113	.001	0.141	0.584
Overestimator	0.488	0.145	.001	0.204	0.772

Notes. Covariates were gender, race, sexual orientation, poverty, and age. Coefficient is unstandardized. CI = confidence interval. Due to the high number of tests, we choose the more conservative p-value of .001 to denote significance. Significant findings are bolded.

Table 3.

Regression Analyses Comparing Student Underestimators to Accurate Perceivers and Overestimators: Proactive Norms.

	Coefficient	Std Error	P-value	Lower 95% CI	Upper 95% CI
Rape Myths: Gender Expectations
Accurate perceiver	–0.1325783	0.0670929	.048	–0.2641345	–0.0010221
Overestimator	–0.3068763	0.0855793	<.001	–0.474681	–0.1390716
Rape Myths: Denial
Accurate perceiver	–0.1245022	0.0936402	.184	–0.3081249	0.0591204
Overestimator	–0.5946269	0.1191073	<.001	–0.8281844	–0.3610693
Barriers to Helping
Accurate perceiver	–0.1992213	0.1379963	.149	–0.4699065	0.071464
Overestimator	–0.5116659	0.1735457	<.001	–0.8520097	–0.1713222
Positive Attitudes Towards Helping
Accurate perceiver	0.3240363	0.0679465	<.001	0.1908063	0.4572663
Overestimator	0.5858616	0.0866493	<.001	0.415959	0.7557643
Denial of Responsibility
Accurate perceiver	–0.2574234	0.1012562	.011	–0.455976	–0.0588709
Overestimator	–0.4159973	0.129134	.001	–0.6692156	–0.1627791
Perceptions of Student Helping
Accurate perceiver	0.3673955	0.0720857	<.001	0.226043	0.5087479
Overestimator	0.5871355	0.0916855	<.001	0.407353	0.7669181
	Coefficient	Std Error	P-value	Lower 95% CI	Upper 95% CI
Intended Reactive Bystander Behavior
Accurate perceiver	0.598573	0.1700695	<.001	0.2650988	0.9320472
Overestimator	1.087006	0.2171434	<.001	0.6612261	1.512785
Intended Proactive Bystander Behavior
Accurate perceiver	0.0945813	0.1114369	.396	–0.1239251	0.3130877
Overestimator	0.1462577	0.142228	.304	–0.1326251	0.4251404

Discussion

Guided by social norms theory (Berkowitz, 2005, 2010), the situational-cognitive model of bystander behavior (Casey et al., 2016), and the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), we examined adolescents’ perceptions of school personnel’s intended bystander behavior in the current article. Specifically, we compared adolescents who underestimated these intentions to adolescents who accurately perceived and overestimated school personnel’s intended bystander behavior. Results suggested that underestimators were consistently different from these other groups. Findings have implications for social norms theory and for school-based SDV prevention.

In general, adolescents who underestimated school personnel’s intended reactive and proactive bystander behavior reported more beliefs in rape myths, less positive attitudes towards helping, and less feeling of responsibility than other groups. These attitudes about violence are associated with bystander behavior according to the situational-cognitive model (Casey et al., 2016). Similarly, adolescents who underestimated school personnel’s intended bystander behavior had lower perceptions of student helping and less intentions to engage in bystander behavior themselves than other groups. These findings are consistent with previous literature describing the importance of community norms as predictors of SDV, and that in particularly, estimations about community norms are just as important as actual norms (Banyard, 2011; Beckmann et al., 2019; Edwards et al., 2014). Estimations about norms can be adjusted through in-person programming and social marketing campaigns that seek to correct misperceptions of social norms in (Gidycz et al., 2011; Potter, 2012).

Taken together these findings suggest that perceptions of the school environment, specifically about school personnel, are associated with adolescents’ attitudes and intended behavior. Although we cannot draw causality from our findings, this conclusion is consistent with previous research showing that school climate variables may impact students’ bystander behavior (Debnam & Mauer, 2019). The current study goes beyond other research on peer norms (Beckmann et al., 2019) to an understanding of the important role of school staff for SDV norms. Despite the increasing importance of peers for setting norms during adolescence, this study indicates that perceptions of school personnel’s attitudes and behaviors may still be important to adolescents’ own behavioral intentions. This conclusion is also consistent with social norms theory; the norms about bystander behavior in an environment impact adolescents’ own intended bystander behavior (Berkowitz, 2004). Improving school climate around SDV and bystander behavior may influence students’ enactment of these behaviors, further reinforcing a culture that facilitates bystander behavior.

In addition to increasing school personnel’s intended bystander behavior, however, it is important to change students’ perceptions. In the current article, we found that that adolescents who underestimated norms had less favorable attitudes and intended behavior. Consistent with social norms theory, these individuals who underestimate norms will be less likely to enact bystander behaviors (Berkowitz, 2010). Thus, an important prevention strategy will be to change adolescents’ perceptions of school personnel’s intended bystander behavior by correcting misperceived norms. One way to change perceived bystander norms is through social marketing campaigns. For example, a college-based in-person program (Gidycz et al., 2011) increased men’s perceptions that their peers who engage in bystander behavior. These types of programs and campaigns could be implemented in high school settings. Another way is to train school staff and students together so that students can better see personnel’s investment in prevention and commitment to preventing SDV. These types of prevention activities could be enriched by in-school poster campaigns that portray accurate data regarding school personnel’s willingness to help, which overall were quite high.

Limitations and Future Research

In light the limitations of the current article, there is much opportunity for future research in the area of school climate, social norms, and adolescent bystander behavior to prevent SDV. First, the sample lacked racial and ethnic diversity. Given adolescents of different racial and ethnic groups may have different experiences of violence (Kann et al., 2018; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019), these findings may not generalize to other adolescent populations. In addition, this was the first study to examine the basic association between norm perceptions and outcomes as well as gender moderation; future research should explore other potential moderators such as sexual orientation and age. Second, we only measured intended bystander behavior of adolescents and school personnel. Although theory indicates the importance of behavioral intentions (Ajzen, 1991), not all research finds an association between intentions and behavior (Austin et al., 2015). Research also suggests that the reference group chosen can influence effects (teachers versus parents versus peers; “authors masked for review”). Future research should examine actual bystander behavior to determine if social norm misperceptions have the same effect on adolescents’ actual behavior. Third, the current article was cross-sectional. Using longitudinal data, one could explore the association between misperceptions about school personnel’s behavior with subsequent bystander attitudes and behavior. This test would get closer to casual inference. In addition, it is possible that attitudes and behavioral intentions impact estimation of school personnel’s bystander behavior. Fourth, although findings were consistent across many attitudes and intended behaviors, the effects sizes in the current study were small, indicated need for replication and for considering norms about misperceptions to be one part of a larger, complex system regarding SDV attitudes and behaviors. Fifth, this study examined school personnel overall, inclusive of various staff members. Future studies may examine differences in perceptions and actual bystander behavior by various school personnel who play different roles in students’ lives (e.g., teachers, administrators, coaches). Sixth, we measured school personnel’s bystander behavior using personnel’s reporting. It could be beneficial to use a multi-method measurement of school personnel’s bystander behavior by including things like observation and students’ reporting to ensure that the reporting of school personnel’s bystander behavior is accurate and not driven by social desirability. Finally, the perceptions of based on previous research on college students and had a low peer helping scale had a Cronbach’s alpha of .51. Future research may improve upon this measure by further testing the items with high school students and by increasing internal consistency.

Conclusion

In summary, adolescents’ misperceptions of school personnel’s intended bystander behavior matter in terms of their own attitudes and behavioral intentions. We suggest that prevention initiatives work to correct misperceptions about school personnel’s intended bystander behavior, to increase adolescents’ intended bystander behavior, and ultimately reduce SDV among adolescents. To date, much of the SDV prevention that takes place in schools focuses on students and on changing peer social norms. A multipronged approach should more fully incorporate training of school staff in ways that not only increase their ability to be helpful bystanders but also their intention to intervene is made clearer to students. Next steps in prevention will be enhanced with research that takes a “whole school approach” (McMahon et al., 2019) and studies students, teachers, staff, and administrators together.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We owe a great deal of gratitude to our school and community partners and the 50+ research assistants and program facilitators and to Stephanie Sessarego for project coordination. Without these agencies and individuals, this project would not have been possible.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Funding for this study was provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Grant #R01-CEO02524.

ORCID iDs

Emily A. Waterman

Victoria L. Banyard

Kimberly J. Mitchell

Katie M. Edwards

Author Biographies

Emily A. Waterman, PhD, is a faculty member in developmental psychology at Bennington College. The goal of her research program is to prevent youth sexual and dating violence (SDV) and improve response to SDV, ultimately reducing the negative impact of SDV on youth.

Victoria L. Banyard, PhD, is a professor at Rutgers University in the School of Social Work and Associate Director of the Center on Violence Against Women and Children. Dr Banyard usesquantitative and qualitative methods to understand how, where, and why prevention strategies and programs succeed or not.

Kimberly J. Mitchell, PhD, is a Research Associate Professor of Psychology at the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. Dr Michell’s research focuses on childhood violence exposure, peer victimization, technology-involved victimization, violence prevention, and childhood adversity.

Katie M. Edwards, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families, and Schools and Educational Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Dr Edwards’ research focuses violence on the development and evaluation of programs to prevent and respond to partner and sexual violence.

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