Stephanie M. Townsend Content Topic Results

This is the final report from the NSVRCs three year National Prevention Strengths and Needs Assessment Project, and provides a summary of the work completed during the third year of the assessment as well as a synthesis of major themes across the three year project.  The major activities of the Year 3 assessment were the completion of a national survey comparison of findings to the Year 1 survey.

The second phase of NSVRC's Prevention Assessment project focused on interviews with innovative prevention programs and a diffusion survey to document how innovations have spread throughout the sexual violence prevention field. The emphasis of this assessment was on how programs are thinking about primary prevention and the processes that allowed innovation to develop.

In 2009, NSVRC contracted with Dr. Stephanie Townsend to assist in developing a plan to measure the primary prevention capacity of the sexual violence prevention field. This is a three-year process being conducted in collaboration with the CDC and CALCASA/Prevention Connection. This is the Year 1 report for the project.

Although primary prevention is at the root of the movement to end sexual violence, community-based agencies are challenged to find practical resources around program development and evaluation. Developing programs with evaluation in mind will enable prevention educators to build upon strengths and improve programs to achieve desired results. Through evaluation, sexual violence prevention educators will be able to show what they have always trusted: that their programs do make a positive difference.