00:00 Louie Marven: 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 Louie Marven and I'm the Training Specialist at NSVRC. And on today's episode, we're discussing our new e-learning tool called plain language for sexual assault abuse and harassment.

[music]

00:22 LM: And here are two of my NSVRC colleagues, Laura Palumbo and Megan Thomas. Laura and Megan, would you introduce yourselves? 

00:45 Laura Palumbo: Sure. So my name is Laura Palumbo, and I am NSVRC's Communications Director. I've been on the NSVRC team for 10 years now, and my role is really managing the awesome team of folks that work on our publications our website our social media pages our annual Sexual Assault Awareness Month Campaign, and then also working with journalists in their coverage of sexual violence and sexual violence prevention and that whole effort of NSVRC falls under what we call our messaging work. And our messaging work is really what brought me to be involved in this online tool, as well as a lot of other projects that we've done on how to more effectively communicate about preventing sexual violence.

01:40 LM: Thanks, Laura, I'm excited to hear in a little bit some of the work that you've been doing over your years at NSVRC on messaging. Welcome, Megan, would you introduce yourself? 

01:52 Megan Thomas: Thanks. Yeah, I'm the Communications Specialist at NSVRC and my job mostly involves reviewing, editing, developing and designing the publications that we create, as well as posting on our social media platforms. So that involves a lot of messaging, a lot of using plain language, whether that's reviewing things to make sure that they're accessible in the way they're written, writing social media posts that our general public audiences are gonna connect with, and so much more.

02:21 LM: Great, well, I had a lot of fun developing this tool with both of you, and I have trained a little bit with both of you and some of our other colleagues on the topic of messaging, including plain language and other topics therein. And I'm excited to hear a little bit first about some of the NSVRC's background. Laura, you mentioned that you've been doing work on understanding effective messaging and effective communication about sexual assault for a long time, so tell us about how you and NSVRC came to learn about plain language and effective communication about sexual violence.

03:04 LP: Even before I started in my position at NSVRC, so over 10 years ago, there was a clear theme and need in our field that people... One of the most difficult challenges that many of our partners encountered was actually communicating about sexual harassment, assault and abuse in clear ways that their audience understood, and then not only talking about those topics with them, but to then navigate this really complex conversation on how we prevent these different forms of sexual violence. And many of our partners in the field just feeling like that this was... That it was so hard to talk about this, this topic and ways [03:54] ____ that led to people having a huh, moments in understanding the role of prevention, especially when we think about primary prevention and not just responding after a sexual assault has incurred. And so that is what led NSVRC to embarking on a number of projects to dig deeper at this question. What is it that makes it so challenging to talk about these topics, and how can we talk about them more effectively? 

04:28 LP: And to get at some of those questions, we worked with a Berkeley Media Studies Group, which we fondly call internally as BMSG by their acronym, and their team supported us in five years of research and digging into how we communicate about sexual violence and its prevention to really understand what we could learn and what we could improve and enhance. And some of what that looked like is we at the beginning of that five-year journey, did a research study on how sexual violence was covered in the news. And in that news analysis, we were able to have a better understanding of what the general public is understanding about sexual violence and its prevention based on what they're reading in news coverage. And the big, spoiler warning, [chuckle] the big learning from that was that even when the news was covering issues of sexual harassment, of sexual assault and sexual abuse, very rarely was prevention being discussed. And that there was this really significant gap in how people, their understanding of sexual violence and as something that could be prevented. And then we also did intensive listening sessions with folks actually that work in our field, that are experts in sexual violence prevention network on college campuses, that work at communities' organizations or youth serving organizations.

06:09 LP: And we studied how experts talk about preventing sexual violence to get a better understanding of how a range of folks were talking about prevention because I think that that's something that many of us in the field can resonate, is that there's not any two of us that are talking about prevention in the same ways. And to learn from that as well. And then we got to do some message testing using different stories and storytellers to hear from audiences in the general public or people who have less of a connection or connection to our field. What stories, examples and language helped them to understand that sexual harassment, abuse and assault could be prevented and to see their role in the process.

07:01 LM: That's great. Thank you for that history, Laura. And I love that you talked about a lot of things, but including things that we've learned at NSVRC. And as someone who is a little bit newer to the work, I know that we have a lot of conversations about how we can use some of these lessons that we've learned through all the work that you described to improve our own messaging and our own communications. And I think that, I know what I've trained on this topic how, in the field, that's something that we try to talk about a lot, that we're in this with you and we are constantly learning these lessons and revising too. I'm really glad you mentioned that. Megan, I think that with all of the work that you are doing in the communications department and the role that you've played, developing some tools related to effective communication on sexual violence, maybe you could talk about some of those lessons that we've learned about plain language specifically. So why, based on this research, or on this background that Laura described, why did we want to develop a tool dealing with plain language? 

08:16 MT: Yeah, that's a great question. One of the big lessons that really came out of all the message testing research that we were doing was one of the big challenges that we were seeing in our field, and probably in most fields, is this use of jargon. And seeing that the terms and phrases that we use every day that we're really familiar with, we tend to forget that anyone outside of our field isn't necessarily gonna be on the same page as us, and that we're missing out on reaching folks if they're not understanding what we're talking about. One of the huge examples that we came across was we used the term sexual violence all the time, it's in the name of our organization. It is a key phrase that we've used for years and years. And when we were doing our message testing research that Laura mentioned with the BMSG, we were finding that even that phrase that seems so foundational to what we are doing isn't always understood. So when we're talking about sexual violence in our field, we see that as a continuum, as a sort of spectrum of behaviors that can range from sexual harassment to sexual abuse, to rape, and that's generally understood in our field. But when we're talking with anyone who maybe isn't as involved in our field or just a general public audience, they weren't necessarily getting that we were talking about a continuum. To them, sexual violence sounded more like one specific violent act.

09:43 MT: And so we had to really think about how do we communicate this in a way that everyone can understand? And what we learned was if we actually described this continuum, if we say sexual harassment abuse and assault, or if we describe sexual harassment and misconduct in the workplace, or child sexual abuse, if we just name what it is specifically that we're talking about, that's gonna reach more people. And that has been a thing that we're still learning, a thing that I still find myself catching myself on to make sure that I'm using the full phrase. That's something that has changed to the way that we do our work. So based on all of these, we started talking about how we can share what we've learned in an online tool. And we really felt that plain language is a really foundational skill in messaging. We knew that we learned so much through all of our messaging research, but one of the things we really want to help people understand is this idea of plain language and reaching everyone in your audience. And we also found that it's a skill that everyone can use. Everyone in your organization can use plain language to message more effectively. It's not just the people on the communications team, or the Spokesperson, or the Executive Director, everyone is messaging, whether they're training or whether they are writing resources. They're all using these messaging skills. We found that that was a really key place to start with plain language.

11:23 LM: That's great. Thanks, Megan. Yeah, and when you talk about how everyone needs to know how to use plain language, I think just about, even our outside of work lives, when we're telling our friends and family what we're doing at work and then what the purpose of our work is, I think that's a great place to apply these skills, and speaking, and communicating in plain language. And yeah, thanks for describing the example of the term sexual violence, and that gets at the fact that we named the course Plain Language for Sexual Assault and Abuse and Harassment. And so let's talk about the tool specifically for a little bit. And I know something I was excited about in working on this tool was how users would have an opportunity to practice using plain language in their own voice, and thinking about their own audience, and their own goals, and how and where they're communicating. So, what can listeners expect from using this tool? Laura, would you describe maybe some of the basics of the tool? 

12:37 LP: Sure. So this tool can be an opportunity to just learn a basic working this definition of plain language and then how that relates to us in our field using everyday language to talk about sexual harassment, assault, and abuse, so that we can build better connections with audiences and anyone that we're trying speak with. And in the course, well we're talking about plain language, but also why, the why behind the need to use plain language. And what some of these big challenges are for those that work in our field, what some of our go-to jargon often looks and sounds like, and then taking some opportunity to practice putting the skills in place to use more plain language and communicate in ways that are simpler, but also more effective.

13:47 MT: One of the things this tool also does is acknowledges that communicating about sexual violence is challenging, is hard, and we look at some reasons about why that is the case and how to make it a little easier to communicate. I'm reminded of when I first started working at NSVRC, our Sexual Assault Awareness Month, slogan for that year was prevention is possible, and... No I wanna start that over again, sorry. I'm reminded of an example, when I first started noticing this disconnect and this difficulty in communicating about sexual violence. When I first started working at NSVRC our Sexual Assault Awareness Month campaign slogan for the year was Prevention is Possible. And to us at NSVRC, we knew when we were talking about prevention, what we were specifically referring to was primary prevention, so stopping sexual harassment and assault before they have a chance to happen through social norms change and through consent education and healthy relationships.

14:53 MT: So we felt that that was a really positive helpful message of like, "Yes, we can prevent this before it happens." And then when we rolled that slogan out on social media into our more general public audience, we quickly saw that not everyone was working with the same definition of prevention than we were, and they weren't seeing it as a primary prevention, they thought we were talking more about risk reduction or about stopping specific incidences happening. And people were thinking that we were implying that they could have prevented their own sexual assaults, which was not at all what we meant and so that was a huge wake-up call for me to realize that we were not working with the same definitions and that the plain language that explaining what we were talking about was much more valuable in that case is saying, this is actually what we mean, we mean stopping it before it has a chance to happen. And that required that we had to do some education and back up and think about what we were... The terms that we were using that maybe aren't as accessible to everyone.

15:57 LM: That's a really great example Megan. When you were talking I was thinking about some of the plain language tips that we have in the course, and you touched on several of them, one of them being just using common everyday words. I think sometimes those of us in this field or any field, we know stuff about our topic, and that's great, and we should be really proud about that and assertive about that, and to talk about the things that we know. But sometimes how that actually manifest is by using insider language and using words that make us sound as smart as we are. And folks who are listening are smart too, they just aren't used to using some of these insider terms, and so if we actually tell people what we're talking about, they'll get it. And I really like that example. Thank you for sharing it. This was a really fun tool to develop with you both, and I know that we had a lot of fun ideas for things to put in here, and you can't fit everything in a tool like this. There's always a lot that you leave on the cutting room floor and there's maybe some stuff that people expect or want to be in there that isn't in there. So I know that when I was going out to do training on this topic, something that people have asked for are things like a glossary or a dictionary or a list of 'good things to say'. So why isn't that part of this course? 

17:27 LP: Yeah, one of the things that we learned in the research is that there's not one magic phrase or term to use, that there's no one-size-fits-all approach to talking about these topics. 'Cause really, it's a range of topics and a range of messages that all need to be in a specific context to be effective. And I think what we... One of the hardest lessons learnt was that it's not that simple, and it's actually a lot more complex than we had thought to effectively communicate about sexual violence and then what prevention can look like, and that not only is there a range of terms that are gonna serve a range of different goals, but really that it has to be audience-centered and you have to have your own audience in mind. Each of us needs to be thinking about an audience, and I think often times one of the things that's most challenging is that we're thinking of a wide range of people when we think of our audience. So people who all have different levels of learning and understanding on this topic or familiarity with it, and so actually setting a baseline for yourself of how do I talk about these issues in the way that the person who in my audience knows the least will be able to understand and benefit from and from that, that being really an opportunity to shift our mentality about how we talk about our work and not just thinking about what we know, but what our audience needs to know and how we can help use language to build pathways towards them understanding.

19:25 LM: Yeah, thanks Laura. It makes me think of when I was kind of new this field and I'm just starting to work in the field, and I just had that memory of hearing some of those catch phrases and those talking points that people around me knew what they were talking about, but I didn't really know fully what they were talking about, and so that just reminds me that from developing this tool and working on this topic, I've been reminded over and over that plain language is about access and it's about building those on-ramps that you're talking. And so when we use plain language and when we consider our audiences and when we do things to communicate plainly to those audiences, we are doing accessibility work really. We're making sure that we're not this exclusive set apart field that has no relevance to the broader public and so that people can really engage with the topics in ways that certainly we hope that they do, so we can prevent sexual abuse from happening. So I wonder if you both have lessons learned from doing this work and from developing this tool. Megan, do you have any lessons learned that you're able to share? 

20:48 MT: Yeah, and it's a lesson that I'm still learning and still reminding myself of. This idea that when we're using plain language it's really helpful to describe rather than label what we're talking about. So like I said earlier, instead of using the label of sexual violence describing that continuum more of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault and what I found is that usually takes more words and it's been so drilled into me through all my years of school and in my work life of conciseness is important. You have to use as few words as possible, and so it really is a huge mind shift of reminding myself no, actually it's okay to use more words sometimes because that's gonna make it more accessible and more easy to understand. But it is still a thing that I have to constantly remind myself of.

21:35 LM: Nice. Thanks Megan. I know, same thing for me being an English major in college and learning that lesson that you want to eliminate words and you wanna be really concise and those are good things to know, but not necessarily if you want people to know things that don't rely on jargon in certain language. That's awesome. Laura what about you? 

22:07 LP: So I think I did learn a lot as well, Louie, about accessibility and one of the take aways from the messaging that really emphasized that for me is that when we were actually testing some of these messages with folks in the general public who were across different demographics in terms of their age or their political background or their level of education, race, gender that for the majority of folks, when we used insider terminology and our jargon, it made them feel like outsiders regardless of what those affiliations or identities look like, and so that was this big wake-up call because I think that a lot of times the way we've tried to communicate around sexual violence in general as a field as it's shift to being more professionalized and academic, that there has been this simultaneous shift to it actually be exclusionary and here I am using word like exclusionary, right? [chuckle] That's not very plain language.

23:28 LP: So when I say exclusionary meaning that we are not creating seats at the table with the word that we're using, that we're sending a signal that you don't belong here. You don't belong at this table. And so that is something that I think it was a really powerful lesson. And I guess I would use that lesson to segue into another lesson, so just as you saw me catch myself in [chuckle] falling into use of more complex and complicated terminology, that's something that is definitely an area of ongoing work for me, myself as well as for other members of our team at NSVRC, but I think in particular it might be easy to assume that as someone who has for years studied not only in terms of our organization's work, but in general my academic background has been in communications and being so involved in this project specifically that I would probably represent to folks what a good example of what it looks like to put these goals into practice. And that is absolutely not the case. I need this just as much as, and probably more because of how embedded I am in an organization, a national organization that focuses on research that uses a public health framework.

25:09 LP: All of those layers mean that I need this even more because of my role and because of my background, and that the more you know means that you probably have a lot more to unlearn in terms of [chuckle] how you communicate and communicating more effectively, and I would just wanna share that for people who have felt that frustration 'cause I know that frustration of I didn't say that quite like I meant to, or I can tell that what I wanted to resonate with this person or with this audience isn't really coming through. They're not really getting what I'm saying and it's not them.

[laughter]

25:49 LP: So I guess I would just put that out there too, as the lesson learned of awareness about communication and awareness about ease of plain language and the language that we use is ongoing and in an ongoing opportunity for us to improve and the piece of that, and here I am getting [chuckle] a little geeky about that is one of the things that's very interesting about us shifting to that point of view about how we communicate individually is it's also representative of the context that we're communicating in. 'Cause context and audience are never static either. They're not always the same [chuckle] in terms of their level of information or the amount of background or context that they have for the work that we're doing. So in having worked at our organization for this period of time, I've really seen that a lot more people in the general public understand what the term re-culture means when we use it, then when we used it 10 years ago. But that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the most effective or plain term to be using. So just kind of like that, that this is ever evolving in terms of our own journey, but our audiences journey and the context that we're messaging in, and that all of that can be served by having more awareness and being intentional.

27:22 LM: That's great. Thanks so much, Laura. I love that you're underscoring that there's something in here for everyone. Definitely, if it's your first time thinking about plain language. It's a great tool. It's also a great tool, like you're saying, Laura, for those people who have been in the field for a long time and maybe have developed some communication habits around public health or grant language. So again, the tool is called plain language for sexual assault, abuse and harassment. It's available on NSVRC's campus, which you can find at campus.nsvrc.org. And Laura, would you review where else people can go beyond the tool to learn more about the topic of plain language? 

28:12 LP: Sure thing. So like we've been talking that today, we developed this tool specifically on plain language. But one of the cool things about our messaging work in the research that we did with the Berkeley Media Studies Group, is it was able to inform a lot of different pieces that we were able to offer folks around, how do you effectively community around prevention. So what we also created in that process was a guide called "Moving Toward Prevention; a Guide for Reframing Sexual Violence." And that is a publication that talks about recommendations for how to frame sexual violence, develop effective messages about prevention and work with the media to inform and educate the public if you... In that guide we talk about importance of plain language, but aren't able to go into this level of detail about how we practice using plain language as a skill. And the guide gives you a really good comprehensive overview of what we learned from, our research with BMSG, as well as what are some takeaways from that overall frame work in addition to plain language.

29:33 LP: And our partners at the organization reliance, also supported the research that Berkley Media Studies Group did and released a guide as well, and their guide is called "Where We Are and Where We're Going; Making the Case for Preventing Sexual Violence." And that provides recommendations on making the case for prevention with general public audiences, in a range of ways that is also very helpful. And so both guides have a lot of value to offer people who are trying to make this ongoing shift toward talking about these topics more effectively and reaching more audiences. One of the other things that NSVRC created that is also a very cool tool, is we're thinking a lot about how we could use our lessons learned from the research on messaging and our work with Berkley Media Studies Group, specifically in helping folks talk to members of the media, to journalists and reporters. And so we created a media relations tool kit, that gives some simple easy-to-use tools on how to prepare for an interview or write a press release, and plan media relations all in ways that was informed by that research as well. And all of that is accessible on our website.

30:55 LM: Thanks, Laura. So yeah, definitely go check out those tools. Check out the eLearning tool, Plain Language for Sexual Assault, Abuse, and Harassment. And this has been a great discussion. It was really fun kind of getting a chance to debrief working on this tool with you both. [31:17] ____ had a lot of fun developing it. So thank you to Laura Palumbo. Thank you, Megan Thomas. I'm Louie Marven. We are from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.

[music]

31:29 LM: Thanks for listening to this episode of Resource On the Go. For more resources and information about preventing sexual assault, visit our website at www.nsvrc.org. You can also get in touch with us by emailing resources@nsvrc.org.