AEA RCT Registry

General Information

Title

‘Growing Up Without Violence’: a cluster randomised trial to evaluate the impact of a school-based intervention to prevent sexual exploitation of adolescents

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0011299

Initial registration date

October 10, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

October 17, 2023, 11:49 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

Brazil

Region

Recife Metropolitan Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Freedom Fund

Affiliation

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Ligia Kiss

PI Affiliation

UCL

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2023-11-10

End date

2024-08-30

Keywords

Crime, Violence, & Conflict

Additional Keywords

commercial sexual exploitation of children, sex trafficking, child sexual abuse, child protection

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

The ‘Crescer Sem Violência’ / ‘Growing Up Without Violence’ (CSV) curricula aims to reduce children’s vulnerability to commercial sexual exploitation as well as improve school staff’s ability to identify and respond to case of abuse. The CSV curricula centres on three film series that introduce concepts such as bodily autonomy, sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation. The shows—‘What is this exploitation’, ‘What is this abuse’ & ‘What body is this’—were developed in consultation with child rights professionals. The films invite debate around sexual rights and self-protection. The intervention is delivered through adult facilitators, who receive training through in-person workshops and online courses.

The evaluation is a two-arms parallel-group Randomised Control Trial (RCT) of a school-based complex social intervention to prevent sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. The unit of randomisation for the RCT are public schools in two municipalities within the Recife Metropolitan Region. Out of the eligible schools who sign up for the intervention, 60 schools will be randomised to two parallel arms (30 in the intervention arm, and 30 in the control arm). Stratified randomisation, based on a composite measure including level of poverty and criminality in the schools’ neighbourhood and school performance, will be used to allocate schools to the study arms in a 1:1 ratio. Schools in the intervention arm will receive the CSV intervention during the school year, starting after the baseline survey. Data will be collected from a cross-section of students at baseline and at endline, with roughly 6 months in between when the CSV curriculum will be delivered. We will examine associations between aspects of programme implementation and outcomes, and the causal pathways leading to changes in adolescents’ attitudes and behaviours.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Fund, Freedom and Ligia Kiss. 2023. "‘Growing Up Without Violence’: a cluster randomised trial to evaluate the impact of a school-based intervention to prevent sexual exploitation of adolescents." AEA RCT Registry. October 17. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.11299-1.0

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

The ‘Crescer Sem Violência’ / ‘Growing Up Without Violence’ (CSV) curricula aims to reduce children’s vulnerability to commercial sexual exploitation as well as improve school staff’s ability to identify and respond to case of abuse. The CSV curricula centres on three film series that introduce concepts such as bodily autonomy, sexual abuse and commercial sexual exploitation. The shows—‘What is this exploitation’, ‘What is this abuse’ & ‘What body is this’—were developed in consultation with child rights professionals. The films invite debate around sexual rights and self-protection. The intervention is delivered through adult facilitators, who receive training through in-person workshops and online courses.

Intervention Start Date

2024-02-01

Intervention End Date

2024-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

1. Estimate the impact of the intervention in self-reported prevalence of foundational knowledge to correctly identify appropriate and inappropriate sexual advances and acts, and grooming (both in-person and online).

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

- “Foundational knowledge”: we used the revised Children’s Knowledge of Abuse Questionnaire to measure children’s understanding of sexual abuse prevention concepts. This is a validated instrument focussing on concepts that are common in interventions to prevent CSA. This instrument reflects well the CSV curriculum content, has good psychometric properties, and allows for comparisons with other international school-based sexual abuse programmes.
- “Knowledge about appropriate and inappropriate touches and grooming” specific to the CSV curriculum were developed by the research team, and also based on adaptation of culturally relevant questions from previous evaluation of a school-based intervention to prevent sexual abuse of children.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

1. Examine the effect of the intervention on attitudes condoning sexual exploitation and behaviors that protect children from sexual exploitation, including how to correctly report incidents of sexual exploitation to the competent authorities.
2. Examine changes in educators’ attitudes and foundational knowledge to identify signs of sexual abuse and exploitation in children associated with the intervention implementation
3. Examine associations between aspects of programme implementation (frequency of sessions, follow-up, adherence, referrals) and intended outcomes
4. Identify potential causal pathways leading to change in adolescents’ attitudes and behaviours and sexual exploitation.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

- Experiences of “sexual exploitation” based on the items used in the Violence Against Children (VAC) and Youth Surveys complemented with a question on disclosure of difficult experiences to trusted adults (family and teachers) by Weatherley et al.
- “Cyberbullying” was assessed with the Cyberbullying Questionnaire.
- “Online grooming” was measure used the Multidimentional Grooming Questionnaire (MOGQ).

Experimental Design

The evaluation is a two-arms parallel-group Randomised Control Trial (RCT) of a school-based complex social intervention to prevent sexual exploitation of children and adolescents. The unit of randomisation for the RCT are public schools in two municipalities within the Recife Metropolitan Region. Out of the eligible schools who sign up for the intervention, 60 schools will be randomised to two parallel arms (30 in the intervention arm, and 30 in the control arm). Stratified randomisation, based on a composite measure including level of poverty and criminality in the schools’ neighbourhood and school performance, will be used to allocate schools to the study arms in a 1:1 ratio. Schools in the intervention arm will receive the CSV intervention during the school year, starting after the baseline survey. Data will be collected from a cross-section of students at baseline and at endline, with roughly 6 months in between when the CSV curriculum will be delivered. We will examine associations between aspects of programme implementation and outcomes, and the causal pathways leading to changes in adolescents’ attitudes and behaviours.

Experimental Design Details

Not available

Randomization Method

Randomisation will be done digitally through a computer program (Excel).

Randomization Unit

The unit of randomisation for the RCT are public schools in two municipalities within the Recife Metropolitan Region.

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

Out of the eligible schools who sign up for the intervention, 60 schools will be randomised to two parallel arms (30 in the intervention arm, and 30 in the control arm).

Sample size: planned number of observations

In each of the 60 schools, across baseline and endline, a total of 6,000 surveys with students will be completed.

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

30 schools in the intervention arm, and 30 in the control arm.

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

The study was powered to measure a relatively small but meaningful change in the proportion of adolescents with foundational knowledge about inappropriate sexual advances and acts. We considered, therefore, that a sample size of 30 schools per study arm with 50 students sampled in each school will allow measuring an increase of 11% in students with adequate levels of foundational knowledge from an initial prevalence of 30% with a 5% significance level (alpha) and 90% power, assuming 0.02 intraclass correlation.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name

University College London

IRB Approval Date

2023-02-23

IRB Approval Number

24085/001