0:00:00.9 Sally: Welcome to Resource on the Go, a podcast from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center on Understanding, responding to and preventing sexual abuse and assault. I'm Sally Laskey and is CRCs evaluation coordinator. On this episode, I talk with researchers Nicole Allen. She/her professor of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University and Aggie Rieger, She/Her PhD student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, about their evaluation study to help us better attend to the needs of preventionists and how to build a climate that can support their transformational work.

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0:01:00.7 Sally: Welcome to Resource on the Go, Aggie and Nicole, could you please just say a brief hello to folks? 

0:01:07.5 Nicole Allen: Hello. Thank you for having us, Sally. To start, we also wanna acknowledge our co-authors on this study. Alison Blackburn, Apol Venog, and Hope Holland. And of course, none of this research would be possible without especially the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault and also the Illinois Department of Public Health. We really appreciate the opportunity to partner with them as evaluators in their RPE efforts.

0:01:31.1 Aggie Rieger: And the community seminar space at the University of Illinois was really helpful for thinking through this research. Also Sally, I am a fan of this podcast and I've recommended it to Preventionists, so it's especially cool to get to be here.

0:01:47.9 Sally: Oh, I wish folks could see the big smile on my face right now. Thank you for that, Aggie. So, Nicole, tell our listeners a little bit more about who you are.

0:02:00.2 NA: I'm Nicole Allen. I use she/her pronouns. I'm professor and chair of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University. My research focuses broadly on the formal and informal community response to gender-based violence. So that includes coalition building and cross-sector partnership and organizational and systems change, and of course, in this context sexual assault prevention efforts.

0:02:21.6 AR: And my name is Aggie Rieger. My pronouns are she and her. I'm a clinical and community psychology PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I've been part of the Illinois RPE evaluation team under Nicole's supervision. And in my research, which as a grad student, I'm lucky to say, is also largely Nicole's research. I'm most excited about sexual violence prevention efforts that really target or embed themselves in settings and in understanding more about how to support practitioners, particularly those at local levels.

0:03:00.8 Sally: Well, for folks that are regular listeners to the podcast, they know that we've been focusing more and more on community level prevention and addressing the root causes of sexual violence. We've been working with preventionists from around the country to help support their growth in this area. Could you share a brief overview of how you approach your research on this topic? 

0:03:23.6 NA: Yeah. Like you Sally, our field is community psychology. So when we heard about this mandate and this push for outer layer focus, unsurprisingly we were really interested in that movement. And we also knew that it would be a complex change process and wanted to support it in our role as evaluators. So this study is a part of our evaluation work with ICASA with a goal of understanding those processes.

0:03:51.4 AR: And by outer layers, of course we're thinking about work that takes up policies, practices, climate, some NSVRC training materials have described outer layers really well as being something where if you were a person in that setting, you might benefit from the preventionist work even if you never met that preventionist never worked with them directly. And maybe you didn't even know they were there. But it's that something about your context has changed and that's outer layer work.

0:04:26.3 NA: Yeah, so we were particularly interested in how local preventionists were taking up that relatively new mandate to address the outer layers of the social ecological model because there's often distance and often great distance between newly adopted approaches and their implementation. So we wanted to understand what outer layer prevention efforts were in place at the time of the interviews, which was relatively early on in this five-year funding cycle. And we also wanted to understand what was shaping preventionist experiences as they tried to do that outer layer prevention work.

0:05:00.2 AR: Yeah. We were also interested in how preventionists conceptualized this work, like what they thought caused sexual violence and how they chose to address those causes.

0:05:13.7 NA: We often refer to that as problem definition. And practitioners conceptualizations of complex social issues is interesting, especially because it may have some bearing on how they organize and how they think about their work. So there's some research that Rebecca Campbell did with rape advocates. And along the same lines, Amy Lerner and I conducted research with domestic violence advocates that suggested that the way that practitioners conceptualize their work or their problem definition was related to how advocates understood their role as interventionists. Right. And often the US context were very focused on individual level approaches to change. So if I have a problem definition that emphasizes that, then I might follow with intervention at that level.

0:06:00.4 AR: Also in the spirit of RPE and just how RPE evaluation often works, we also started with local preventionist interviews simply as a way to get to know these preventionists. Like much of what we've done in partnership with ICASA there's always a dual focus. We want to be collecting and interpreting data, but we also want to be simultaneously building relationships and focusing on just practically how is this research and evaluation gonna be of real use to people at the state and local level. So again, the interviews were to investigate problem definition and outer layer prevention implementation, but they were also part of relationship building across our state.

0:06:49.0 Sally: Aggie, you mentioned RPE for our listeners who maybe aren't steeped in that, that's the rape prevention education programming program, which is the primary funding of prevention for sexual violence in the US coming from the CDC, and you mentioned this relationship building. I wonder if I could just follow up and ask how were preventionists involved in the development of this evaluation study? 

0:07:21.4 AR: Oh, great question. So the interviews were again, like the, this first baseline dipping our toes into the water first saying not only, oh, this is what data collection could be like, but it's literally at the start of the interview saying, hello, [laughter] Hello, my name is and I am part of this team that will be working with you. So from the interviews we started recruiting people for an evaluation advisory board, that board still existed before interviews, but we got much more people on that board, much more active. And since then everything we've done has gotten feedback from the EAB.

0:08:01.1 AR: So that means doing asynchronous activities to help design, what are we going to explore in the next focus group to decide on this statewide survey to alcohol serving establishment leaders. What do you wanna make sure we put in there? What do you think about these questions? We've also worked with preventionists to make new tools, first to evaluate community informed processes like what to pay attention to and what that form should look like. Also, the stuff that goes on surveys, sometimes just making new measures with preventionists. Like what's important to you about why might people not wanna partner with the rape crisis center informing that? Yeah, that's, I think that's one of the coolest parts of RPE.

0:08:50.8 NA: And I'll just jump in to add that ICASA has been a great partner from the very start and then we're very lucky to then also have local preventionists who've engaged in that process with it, with us because it makes it really much richer and much more relevant for them in the end.

0:09:04.5 Sally: And our... So ICASA is the Illinois coalition's getting sexual assault and our state partners around the country and more and more our territory and tribal coalition partners are keys to all of this work that we're doing. So thanks for talking a little bit more about how that partnership has been grounded, has grounded this work and how it's helped it develop too. I wanna tell you that I've read your article at least five times, and new things stand out to me each time I read it. So I appreciate learning about how you approached your research topic. So I wonder if we could shift now, we're gonna provide people with information on how to get direct access to your research article, but can you tell me what you all learned? 

0:10:01.4 AR: Yeah, well first we learned that inner layer conceptualization of sexual violence or beliefs such as, well I think sexual violence exists because people don't know better. Those were common as were strategies that matched that conceptualization at the individual level, like educational interventions. So that kind of flows. If you think people need to know more to do better, then your selected strategy might be to teach people. The assumption is that a change in knowledge and awareness are needed. And again, prevention education matches that conceptualization.

0:10:44.7 NA: And we also learned that when preventionists had more outer layer conceptualizations, which they did such as sexual violence exists because we live in a transphobic and racist culture. And they were often passionate about these beliefs and at the same time that they could articulate those outer layer conceptualizations, they often didn't match outer those outer layer with beliefs with outer layer intervention efforts. So someone might say that they believe we won't end sexual violence without first ending economic justice, for example, or the vast economic divide in our country.

0:11:19.0 NA: But then when we asked how they address that potential root cause, right, which is the emphasis of this outer layer focus, they might then still answer with a description of a single or shorter session educational intervention with youth. Right? So this is an example where we think problem definition might matter, but then it really isn't in simpatico within how people are practicing. And we do wanna be clear, Aggie and I always revisit this, that youth education is indeed important because there's a, yeah. So we just wanna make sure that people know that we're not dismissing the entire excellent body of work around focusing on education with youth.

0:11:58.1 AR: Yeah, yeah. And I can relate this personally, the clinical part of my clinical community psychology PhD is a lot of therapy. And I provide trauma therapy as a clinical community psychologist in training. So I am here today as someone who is on board with the power of that individual level and also there is a bit of a contradiction if we say that the outer layer needs to change and then we implement individual level interventions to the exclusion of outer layer projects, especially when there is an explicit push to engage in outer layers. So in interviews, I could feel this live like when someone would have the outer layer problem definition, and I would perk up, I'd be like, okay, here we go, we're gonna get an outer layer intervention example here. And then we often wouldn't like, alright, that's interesting that contradiction was something we just wanted to pay attention to because the prevention has had a problem definition that could lead to or could necessitate organizational or community and societal level change.

0:13:16.8 AR: And it just became clear that the important story in this study wasn't just about problem definition. It was not gonna be just about how preventionists thought about sexual violence or what they wanted to do. The story could not end there. We had to go further. We had to look at interviews holistically and across interviews and really ask like, Hey, why doesn't conceptualization cut it? Like why doesn't buying into the need for the outer layer lead people to truly take up outer layer work? Like what is happening in that gap between what you believe and what you do? 

0:14:03.3 NA: Yeah. And so what we found that there were factors, many factors. And so for example, balancing multiple job roles in addition to being a preventionist. So some preventionists are not only working in that capacity, but might also do advocacy in their organizations or balancing a continued mandate to do inner layer work, to continue work with schools and at the same time to move to outer layer work, right? Which really is, that's it is asking a lot, right? Different skillset and different knowledge base. So for a long time, preventionists worked really hard to gain access to schools. That was, those were hard won entries and they were providing school-based prevention education and many preventionists also identified as educators. They identified as people working with youth. So the mandate to move to outer layer intervention not only requires a different skillset, it often in some cases requires a new role and in some ways even a new identity.

0:15:03.1 NA: So when you're thinking about outer layer work, which might require, for example, fostering community partnerships, now you're asking people to engage in a very different skillset. And this is where technical assistance is so critical and still not sufficient and we'll get to that. The other thing that we found, and again, not surprisingly in many ways, is that the work of preventionists is what we'd call very loosely coupled when we think about organizational change efforts. And so for better or for worse, there's not a lot of micromanaging going on with the outer layer mandate. Preventionists are often working on their own, maybe creating what they're doing in real time by themselves and don't necessarily have a lot of opportunities to connect with others. They may even be the only person doing that work. We also found, of course, that in organizational change, and this was true here, leadership messaging is very important.

0:15:56.0 NA: And sometimes that was experienced as unclear at first, what exactly is being asked? Are we being asked to leave schools? Are we staying in schools? So even with the best of intentions, organizational rewards sometimes actually continue to reward the old behavior over the news. So for example, we might inadvertently reinforce practices as usual in schools with youth because that's the information we ask people to record in their work. And then not really creating mechanisms for preventionists to really count their time and hours in terms of outer layer work, which is slower, which may produce less, which doesn't have the same great counts as 150 kids in schools, and so we're asking them to engage in new behavior, but maybe haven't brought in incentives into total alignment with that and accountability structures into alignment.

0:16:47.6 AR: Yeah. And partner engagement for outer layer work really varied too. Like if you have a partner who only wants you to come in for educational interventions, for example, to help them meet a different state education mandate and they don't want to show you their policies or they don't want to send their staff to you for a different level of training, then well, it's tough to do outer layer work with that partner. And this reflected just a complex reality that many local preventionists are deeply, deeply embedded in schools. And Nicole started talking about that, and that's a reality. We could have a whole other study and a whole other podcast on, but one way to sum it up was just an astute quote from one of the participants who just said, I measure my life in school years. So moving to the outer layers is not a simple shift from one set of prevention strategies to another. Again, it's a shift in roles in knowledge and skills and again, even identity as a preventionist.

0:18:00.3 NA: And then, and we do wanna acknowledge that in many ways what we found is really consistent with what we know from implementation science and organizational change research. And we know, Sally, that you are also very familiar with what those bodies of literature tell us. So in the same way that we want preventionists to expand to outer layers of the social ecological model to address sexual violence, the irony is that we must also attend to the ecology of preventionists, right? There's often a danger that we become hyper-focused on the individuals we want to engage the change. So we focus on their knowledge and we focus on their skills and we build that up their competence and confidence. But if we haven't created an organizational climate for innovation, to use a phrase from Catherine Klein who does organizational change work, that change is really not likely to occur.

0:18:54.5 NA: So we need accountability structures. Are we watching what people are doing? Are we rewarding it when it happens? Are we creating structures that align with desired new practice? Are we engaged in clear communications of support from leaders? Do local organizational leaders in rape crisis centers know what's required? Are they prepared to shift? How does it fit with their mandates? Are we removing barriers? Right? People who work on the frontline of anything will tell you they're asked to do something. It's filled with barriers not being removed by the people who have the authority and power to remove them.

0:19:31.0 NA: So this is really about thinking about how we shift that context to really make it possible for preventionists who are so committed to do this work and not that not stopping of their knowledge and skills, we know that's necessary and also not sufficient to produce the organizational change or to produce innovative work.

0:19:53.5 Sally: From what you both just said, Aggie had that quote about measuring life in the school year and as someone who did 10 years of prevention work on a college campus, that really... That hit me at a core level of my DNA, I still feel my body reacting to things in that calendar year, even many decades after I've stopped working in that setting, but another quote that reminded me of that struck me in reading your paper was one that said... As a preventionist, you are an island. I would just love to see what... And they were talking about you... What you interviewers doing right now, talking to other educators, that that person just didn't get enough of that saying again, I'm on an island, I need to communicate with someone else like me, and I also remember feeling like an island, and this was before we had a National Sexual Violence Resource Center. It was before we had a regular National Conference bringing folks together, but we have different things now we have different supports, and I know the two of you have engaged in many of our national connection opportunities, whether through the NSVRC or through our partners at PreventConnect and I'm just wondering how do you think that has supported your work and thinking and also get some ideas about what more we need to be doing and providing...

0:21:44.4 AR: NSVRC has done a lot of work to bring people together, both under the RPE umbrella, but beyond to and just last week, we were at one of those virtual connection opportunities, a shout to you and Jen Grove for organizing, and we got to share this research at those meetings, and per usual the highlight of those connection times were the breakout rooms, so not when we were talking but when others from other states were sharing, so in our room, people who were invited to make their own modified social ecological model for their locals in their states, kinds of like a figure we made for our paper to just think about the ecology shaping preventionist experiences in outer layer work. So these models have a little cartoon drawing of a preventionist in the middle, and then their context or that innovation implementation climate around them. So people in our breakout room, we're doing what we were doing in this paper, which is just asking beyond a locales preventionist, what are some of the surrounding this preventionist that more and more specifically makes implementing outer layer were difficult. Worth It. We would argue, and again, maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but it's certainly challenging for local preventionist.

0:23:11.9 AR: And what was really cool was seeing how the things we found in our study seemed to really ring through for other states too.

0:23:22.0 NA: Yeah. And we know that the National Resource Center and PreventConnect, you've had your eye on the importance of supporting preventionist for a long time and paying attention to context, and we recognize that and see that in the events that we have attended, and I think one of the things that I found the most powerful in those events is the way that you center exemplars, so we were asking in the breakout room, tell us what is the ecological model surrounding the preventionist in your community, your state, trying to do this work? And people were definitely getting to identifying the barriers, the challenges, and I think the next step would be as we have exemplars where something was overcome to highlight those as well, and I think you do a good job of that. And so as we think about this outer layer, we're continuing to hold up those exemplars, here's how we did this, here's how we overcame the isolation, here's how we continue to have a mandate to do school-based work, but also to do coalition building. Here's what followed from the coalition building, here's how you measure and you've done this community level, outer layer change, because often people are like, How do we show that we did this? And so I think the work that you do to emphasize exemplars and success that is really specific enough where people can say, Yes, I can see how that's gonna translate to my locale, to my state, is incredibly valuable.

0:24:44.3 NA: And then there being enough time for people to talk about it and say, Well, what could that look like in my community, and of course, we can't do these for like eight hours a day, but whenever I'm in these settings, I always feel like we needed four or five more, more hours of time, I don't know how to overcome that barrier, but I do think the work you do to keep bringing people together to say, What is the context that preventionist are experiencing as they describe it, so centering their lived experience, how can we support them? What has to happen to create a climate for innovation as we move to the outer layer efforts where have we seen examples, how can we highlight them and how can we then help people imagine what that could look like in their state or their local community, so I'm grateful for the settings that you create, so keep on keeping on, I guess this is the short version of that answer. [laughter]

0:25:37.4 Sally: Thank you for that, and thank you for acknowledging the complexity of this work and the need for all of us to come together around it. I know that I already have a lot of ideas about how we can improve our work here at the NSVRC from reading about your evaluation. So how do you think this research can support and inform those working to prevent sexual self-abuse and harassment? 

0:26:06.3 AR: So in our study, we did find individual level considerations on the part of preventionist that may matter for what they choose to implement, so this did include their preferences, for example, many preventionist found a lot of joy and meaning in working at those inner layers, but in terms of moving the needle forward, I think we would do well to continue to focus on supports for preventionists moving to the outer layers, while of course, still encouraging more research that does focus on the community members experiences with and their outcomes from prevention work and to a bigger picture to consider where and in what context would we think that outer layer projects just have the best shot of being implemented well.

0:27:02.7 NA: So it includes asking the questions we've been kind of threading throughout, do preventionist have sufficient knowledge and skills to do this work? Do they feel comfortable and confident to engage new approaches? But then it also requires every state and locales to ask, Is there sufficient organizational support for new outer layer approaches, for example, Have we implemented flexible work hours, is there additional staff support, and this goes back to what you said before too Sally, about often things being inadequately resourced, if we really match them to their complexity and we don't have an answer of how to overcome that. But so we also can ask there, are we clearing barriers within our control to the implementation of outer layer efforts, have state coalitions adjusted what is incentivized and tracked a success? For example, the Illinois Coalition, they altered their reporting infrastructure so that would better capture a broader range of outer layer prevention activity, so the preventionist don't have the experience of like, Where am I supposed to put this? That brought that reporting process into greater alignment with what the CDC asks the state to report, but it also brought an integrator alignment, and it signals.

0:28:15.7 NA: We care about these things, we want to know what you're doing. In the way of coalition building, want to know what you're doing, that pushes toward the outer layer, so I think it's a great example of shifting expectations, not just in word, but indeed. And so when we talk about infrastructure, it can be that, not simple, 'cause that was a big lift for the one coalition to do that, but it's a way that we're changing our text to use Ellen Pincus often used phrase in the domestic violence arena, to pull for the kind of behavior we wanna see, if we ask for it, we're more likely to see it, and so I think really getting into the nitty-gritty in the day-to-day, and then trying to bring that climate into alignment with what we're hoping to see.

0:29:00.5 Sally: Such a practical example that you just shared, Nicole, when we talk about... We've been talking a lot about data equity, and even looking at the impact on the folks that are providing the data and how that supports their work in so many different ways. So thank you so much. I'm feeling hopeful about that very practical example, even though you said not easy, but possible, 'cause we have some evidence from you that it was possible to make that shift...

0:29:43.2 NA: And just along those lines, Sally, I'll jump in for just a minute. A lot of times people in locales are asked to report data out, but it doesn't necessarily cycle back to them this is... I'm not really just talking about RPE, this is something we see in the human service industry really broadly, and it doesn't close the loop. So I think just from a researcher perspective, I always love to see when you can say, This is what your data look like it's coming back to you, and that it's actually much harder to do, because it's a lot of labour to provide that kind of individualized feedback, but I know I've worked with practitioners over the years, who feel like they have a lot of information going out, but not as much coming back from what they've provided, so I love that you're focused on data equity and Access.

0:30:29.2 Sally: Well, and especially with the community level work and that that data is the communities that we're working with, and how are we centering their ideas for success and making sure they're able to tell their stories about the social justice efforts that they're engaged in and leading.

0:30:56.5 Sally: That's the really exciting part for me in this is really putting the power and using the tools that we have as community... Folks that engage community members, folks that are used to doing activism work, like how can we be supporting those very same efforts and connections in our re-prevention education work and how we talk about it to other people? And it been...

0:31:34.9 NA: And the more that... Yeah. I was just gonna say, the more that communities can then see their successes, it spurs the work, and so being able to document it, it serves so many purposes, but including just keeping your momentum going, and so when you're trying to keep partners a gauge, we know this in coalition building, it really matters to be able to tell a story about the small wins, we did this, we achieved this policy change in this organizational setting, it's being done differently now because of us, that keeps people at your so-called table, and so I think it serves such an important fundamental part and in keeping the word happening.

0:32:14.2 Sally: Yeah, and especially as you both talked about that this work at the outer layers, it takes longer and we need those interim success measures, and we know to keep the momentum going is so critical and important to be able to sustain these efforts, so thinking of that what are you most hopeful about at this point, after being able to share and learn from this evaluation process.

0:32:56.1 NA: And I think the first thing that comes to mind for me always when I'm thinking about hope is that the people... So I think the people engaged in the work, it's really, it's uplifting to do work in the context of RPE because you're with people who care so deeply about these issues and they make strides, and it's such a long road to have as the end goal, ending sexual violence and to stay on that road requires so much tenacity and sustained engagement regarding what's needed, and so I'm always hopeful because of the people, and I think I'm also hopeful because I do think in this RPE world and in the work that you do at the National Resource Center, there is support being provided at many levels to guide this kind of change effort, while preventionist may still have the experience of being an island, and there's a desire to bridge to that.

0:33:48.0 NA: That kind of work is happening. So addressing root causes is never work that preventionist are gonna be able to do alone, it's gonna require all of us, and I think it also, I'm hopeful and excited when I hear folks talking about innovative efforts to address complex problems like economic justice, where there is a tension to implementation at the state level, at the local level, and really bringing prevention together as they do that economic justice work, for an example. I think that kind of cross-level, we have some initiative happening at the state, we have some initiatives happening locally, we're brainstorming together, we're implementing locally and creating those support networks is such a critical strategy because I think local preventionist, of course, some of them who have a lot of infrastructure built for partnership may be able to do that work locally, but I think absent that they need to be guided and supported where the work is happening simultaneously across different locales. So I have been very excited hearing people start to present that kind of multi-layered state local kind of initiative.

0:34:57.6 AR: That's a great shout out to Valor and the work that Valor is doing on economic justice. They've also made some really nice... Very made for practitioners toolkits of like, How do I start to think about economic justice as gender-based violence work, how do I communicate that to a partner? They have awesome tools for them. Illinois has some really interesting policies that are in the works or being implemented now, and within RPE, the CDC lifted the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault up as an example of a state that's been part of a lot of policy efforts. And I think that also gives me a lot of hope I'm also just getting to work with and know people at ICASA and these local sites for the past four years now is so energizing. Of course, there are a lot of barriers that exist in this work, and there's a lot more that we can do to really better understand preventionist contexts, what they're working on, what they're going through, and speaking of this, If listeners haven't heard yet, Darin Dorsey has an awesome series with NSVRC about anti-blackness in the gender-based violence movement, and I really recommend his interviews, if you haven't heard them yet, of course, Sally has heard them, but if you're listening and you haven't heard them yet.

0:36:24.5 AR: It's worth to listen. And I just have to say, whenever I get to go to, for example, one of my classes, preventionist gatherings, man, I always leave those feeling like, Yes, we are going somewhere. And yes, I want to work with these people. I think that preventionist themselves are some of the most helpful people I've ever met. To choose prevention as your full-time job, to choose a job where you are interfacing with so many people and constantly trying to learn more and more, that... That's really special.

0:37:06.7 Sally: It is special, and your work is very special to us, so thank you so much for sharing just this piece of it with us, I know your work is expensive, but thank you for being part of our podcast series, we're gonna be providing information about your article, and about many of the tools and resources that you mentioned in our show notes, but we would invite people to help us continue the conversation by letting us know what else we should be trying to gather or what other topics we should be having on Resource on the Go and just thank you and thank you to all of your partners that you've mentioned that help support all this work and all of the preventionist that were involved in your evaluation study.

0:38:00.8 Sally: So thank you, and I hope folks will stay tuned for the new things that we're able to share that may come out of some of the recommendations from your article. So thanks so much for being here.

0:38:14.0 NA: Thank you for having a Sally.

0:38:16.9 AR: Thank you.

0:38:18.6 Sally: Thanks for listening to this episode of Resource on the Go for more resources and information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website @NSVRC.org Need help accessing research on this topic. Connect with us by emailing resources @NSVRC.org.