Estimates are that one in five girls and one in ten boys have been sexually abused before the age of eighteen. Experts in the field of prevention agree that many sex abusers can and will stop their harmful actions if they are reached and receive proper treatment. STOP IT NOW! uses a multi-faceted public awareness campaign to help end the sexual abuse of children by: developing awareness in potential abusers; providing mechanisms to encourage abusers to stop the abuse, voluntarily surrender to the law enforcement, and seek treatment; working with families, peers, and friends on how to confront abusers; and changing institutional norms and practices in the legal, law enforcement, child protective services, and treatment communities to support an approach that uses treatment to supplant or supplement incarceration. This session will present the design and implementation of the evaluation of STOP IT NOW's campaign in Philadelphia, PA. This is a comprehensive evaluation that includes both process and impact measures. Data collections include surveys of the general public in multiple target neighborhoods, surveys of frontline staff in the legal, law, CPS, and treatment communities, and process tracking of changes in institutional practices and norms. The session will discuss the challenges in developing and evaluating the campaign including: distinguishing STOP's efforts from other ongoing efforts, making the campaign stand out from the background media "noise", building constituencies and accomplishing and measuring change in key institutions, and establishing reasonable expectations for impacts of a campaign in the short and long-run.
Learning Objectives: By the end of the presentation, participants will: (1) be familiar with the history, intent, and components of STOP IT NOW, (2) understand the theory behind the programs emphasis on both the abused and the abuser, (3) understand the fundamental structural changes in legal, law enforcement, and treatment systems that must take place for the individual behavior change to "take", and (4) be familiar with the effectiveness of STOP IT NOW as measured by preliminary evaluation results
Keywords: Child/Adolescent Mental Health, Communication Evaluation
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.