UW-Madison students may soon see an email from the University of Kentucky in their inboxes.
Multi College Bystander Education Efficacy is a national survey aimed at ensuring the most effective training is provided to students to reduce the risk of violence and maintain student well-being.
Conducted by the University of Kentucky — the creators of the Green Dot bystander intervention program used by UW-Madison — the survey will help universities better understand which programs are most successful in “shifting student attitudes about sexual violence and increasing the skills and motivation to intervene as active bystanders,” according to University Health Services Violence Prevention Manager Sam Johnson.
Johnson said the violence prevention — and specifically bystander intervention science — is a relatively new field. She said UW-Madison will benefit from these results.
“This survey is unique in that it will help us understand not only how well interventions like Green Dot work, but how does it work compared to other programs,” Johnson said.
This is the second of three years of UW-Madison participation in the McBEE study. According to Johnson, the first year of the survey — administered last year — was much smaller than this survey and collected “baseline information” regarding UW-Madison students’ recognition of programs like Green Dot. The university found that an “overwhelming” number of students are unaware of “interventions about the Green Dot program.”
This year’s survey, she said, will help guide UW-Madison in future violence prevention decisions.
“It will help us make future decisions of what are the good programs that exist,” she said. “We hope that it confirms why we use Green Dot and helps to strengthen the evidence base that supports Green Dot.”
All UW-Madison students are invited to take the survey, which will take approximately 20 minutes to complete. One thousand survey-takers — chosen at random — will receive a $10 gift card.
Students will receive an email from the University of Kentucky researchers with a link to the study on April 16.
