Free From Abuse: The Booster Project

Violence, Domestic Clinical Trial

Official title:

A Brief Internet-delivered Intervention to Promote Healthy Relationships Among Young Adults: A Randomised Placebo-controlled Pilot Study

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04171206
• Other study ID #: 031298
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: December 1, 2019
• Est. completion date: July 15, 2020

Study information

• Verified date: November 2019
• Source: University of Sheffield
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

This project is designed to develop and test a brief internet-delivered intervention to promote healthy relationships among young adults.

Description:

In spite of the fact that young adults are at an increased risk of experiencing and perpetrating intimate partner violence (IPV), there is a lack of universal and widely accessible prevention programmes targeted at this age group. One of the reasons for this may be that it is difficult to deliver a universal prevention to individuals who are not formally grouped through one organisation, such as employed young adults. Those who are formally grouped, such as university students, are unlikely to take part in a lengthy prevention programme which is not a part of an official curriculum. Therefore, there is a need for widely available, accessible, and efficacious IPV prevention programmes that could be appropriate for all young adults regardless of gender. Since many young adults in contemporary Western societies were exposed to some kind of relationship education in schools, it may be that a brief programme will suffice to further boost their awareness of IPV and reduce IPV perpetration and victimisation risk. Therefore, we propose a brief internet-based intervention, Free From Abuse - The Booster Project, to achieve these objectives.

Primary objectives:

1. To investigate the acceptability and feasibility of the internet-delivered intervention to university students (determined using the 1 and 4-week follow-up rates, % of participants who correctly answered control questions assessing compliance);

2. To assess the acceptability and feasibility of the outcome measures as methods to measure effectiveness of the intervention within a definitive trial (determined using % of missing data);

3. To estimate the standard deviation (SD) for the continuous outcomes to inform sample size calculations for a definitive trial.

Secondary objective:

1. To evaluate the potential effectiveness of the brief internet-delivered intervention, Free From Abuse - The Booster Project, in increasing recognition of abusive behaviour, as well as reducing acceptance of myths about domestic violence, abuse perpetration, and abuse victimisation among young university students compared with placebo.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 148
• Est. completion date: July 15, 2020
• Est. primary completion date: March 15, 2020
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years to 24 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Participants must be university students aged between 18-24 years, reside in the UK, have access to a computer and internet connection, and be fluent in English.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Participants will not be eligible to enrol in the trial if they have visual and/or auditory deficits with regards to watching video clips.

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Violence, Domestic
• Violence, Gender-Based

Intervention

Other:
• Free From Abuse
Participants in the treatment arm will watch a 15-minute talk given by an adult female survivor of IPV who tells the story of her abusive relationship. After watching the video, participants will read information on 10 signs of an unhealthy relationship. The intervention will take approximately 25 minutes to complete.
• Technology and crime
Participants in the placebo control arm will watch a 19-minute talk on technology development and crime. After watching the video, participants will read 10 facts about cyber security. The intervention will take approximately 25 minutes to complete.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United Kingdom	The University of Sheffield	Sheffield

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Sheffield	University of Huddersfield

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United Kingdom, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Change in recognition of abusive behaviour	Recognition of adolescent relationship abuse (ARA) scale (Rothman, Decker, & Silverman, 2006); scores on this 12-item self-report scale range from 12 to 60, with higher scores indicating an increased recognition of abusive behaviour	baseline, immediately post intervention - an average of 1 hour, 1 week, 4 weeks
Primary	Change in acceptance of myths about domestic violence	Domestic Violence Myth Acceptance Scale (DVMAS; Peters, 2008); scores on this 18-item self-report scale range from 18 to 108, with higher scores indicating an increased acceptance of myths about domestic violence	baseline, immediately post intervention - an average of 1 hour, 1 week, 4 weeks
Secondary	Change in abuse perpetration	Safe Dates - Psychological Abuse Perpetration scale (Foshee et al., 1996, 1998); scores on this 14-item self-report scale range from 14 to 56, with higher scores indicating an increased abuse perpetration	baseline, 4 weeks
Secondary	Change in abuse victimisation	14-item Safe Dates - Psychological Abuse Victimisation scale (Foshee et al., 1996, 1998); scores on this 14-item self-report scale range from 14 to 56, with higher scores indicating an increased abuse victimisation	baseline, 4 weeks