CAN'T TOUCH THIS!

The problem: Sexual Assault on Nights Out

Why is this problem important?

BBC Documentary:

The recent BBC documentary, ‘Inside Out London’, highlights that the increase in sexual assault cases in licensed venues have risen by 33% in the last three years. It also illuminates the huge emotional impact on victims involved in such assault cases. See clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watchtime_continue=249&v=yr_pAG7qnVM&feature=emb_logo

Smack Sexual Assault Case:

News Article:https://thetab.com/uk/warwick/2020/01/27/police-launch-investigation-into-serious-sexual-assault-in-smack-last-week-36616

The recent sexual assault case at Smack, a nightclub regularly attended by students of the University of Warwick, demonstrates that this is a problem relevant to and in the proximity of Warwick Students. 

Warwick Group Chat Incident:

The University of Warwick, unfortunately, has a history regarding sexual abuse and harassment. One of the most significant situations concerning this is the ‘boys group chat incident’. This had high publicity, and the issue was of great importance to students, resulting in protests and conferences. 

Talk on Sexual Violence Awareness:

We attended a talk on ‘Sexual Violence Awareness’ where the University Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA) spoke to us. We learnt that 56% of University students have experienced some form of unwanted sexual behaviours (Brook, 2019).

The ISVA explained how there have been 42 new referrals into the service in 2020 alone. Since its set up in April 2018, she has had over 295 face to face sessions: showing how sexual assault really is a problem at Warwick University.

The following link is a summary of the research by Brook (2019): http://legacy.brook.org.uk/data/Brook_DigIN_summary_report2.pdf. 

Research Solution:

The BBC documentary mentioned ‘Good Night Out Campaign’ (GNOC). 

They campaign for safer nightlife by working with venues to get all staff members trained so that they can better understand, respond to, and prevent sexual harassment and assault in their spaces. 

GNOC accredits many types of venues including pubs, bars, clubs, university student unions (SU) and festivals. Venues can then become a ‘GNOC accredited venue’. 

What they offer on their accreditation scheme: 

• Giving you a best practice policy, should any incidents occur.
• Providing posters to display that encourage reporting of any problems and inform students that the staff have been trained to support them.
• Specialist sexual violence support training for your bar and venue team.
• Ongoing confidential support for your staff via phone and email should any incidents come up which they'd like to discuss.

Our Intervention Aims:

1. Initial aim: To get Warwick University SU to become accredited with GNOC.
2. We extended our aim to getting other clubs in Leamington Spa accredited.
3. Whilst waiting for responses, we also decided to promote Warwick Universities ‘Report + Support’ scheme.

https://www.goodnightoutcampaign.org/

Target Audience:

Generally, we targeted individuals in a position of authority, as we assumed they would have the most power to influence change at their venues.

Warwick SU: We primarily contacted the President of our SU. His role involves representing the voices of students and fighting for change within the University.

Leamington Spa Venues: Our main focus was the management teams at nightclub venues. This is because the management are in charge of their venue safety protocol and staff training. 

Students: We also considered students as our target audience regarding awareness of the Report + Support scheme. 

The Intervention Timeline:

1. SU Accreditation:

Step 1: We sent an email to the President of the SU (along with Stuart Croft, the Welfare Officer and the SU general enquiries email).

(see email in 'Persuasion techniques' section)

Step 2: A week later we phoned the President. He promised he would ‘get back to us by the end of the week’. The next week, we waited outside the President’s office until we saw him to arrange a meeting.

Step 3: The meeting seemed successful. The President showed much interest in GNOC and was eager to have the SU accredited. However, he had two concerns:

1. The cost of the accreditation process: suggesting an alternative of in-house training for staff at a cheaper cost (we still urged him to contact GNOC for a quote).
2. He was uncertain if the SU staff already had some similar training.

He told us he needed to liaise with the Commercial Director, then he would get back to us.

The President also reassured us that Warwick University had taken measures since the group chat incident such as introducing 'Report + Support' (something we were unaware of until the talk with the ISVA).

Step 4: After several communications over two weeks, both over the phone and face-to-face, the President told us he was currently too busy to speak with us and asked if we could email him instead.

Step 5: In this email, we conveyed our distress about the lack of effort and communication from the SU team. We urged the President to make some progress. To this day, we have had no response.

Step 6: For a final push, we contacted GNOC and asked if they could send us materials (see photo) to help us to spread GNOC across campus. They agreed, and we distributed these (particularly around the SU bars). In total we distributed 60 GNOC leaflets. We even persuaded some students to wear the badges around campus.

We wanted to make sure the President didn’t forget about us, so we made sure to display the materials on his office door too.

2. Leamington Clubs Accreditation:

Changing our technique:

Whilst waiting to hear back from the President, we stretched our campaign by contacting other local clubs about GNOC.

We contacted the clubs that Warwick students regularly attend (Smack, Neon, Altoria, Assembly, Kelsey's).

However, we concluded that our email would be better received if the body of text was shorter and easier to read at initial look. Instead, the bulk of the information was included as an email attachment (see photo on right). This had similar content to the email that we sent to the SU President.

Responses:

We received positive responses from the clubs, with Altoria replying: 

“Sure, we would be happy to meet these guys and for them to present to our Management and staff”

And Smack & Neon: 

“...we will be looking into this to become an accredited venue and also, extending this training to our other venue, Neon”

However, even after a follow-up email, we didn't hear back from the other venues.

We placed Altoria, Smack and Neon in touch with GNOC. Also, asking both parties if they could update us with their progress. 

FINALLY - A SUCCESS!😄

GNOC and Altoria have cc'd us in their emails and are arranging timings for the accreditation process:

“Please let me know what we need to do next. Is training possible on an evening?”

3. Report and Support Awareness:

Whilst waiting for email responses, we decided to consider whether there was anymore we could do in the mean time.

From the talk we attended by the University’s ISVA, we were surprised by the number of new measures Warwick University had put in place that we had never heard of. To check whether other students at Warwick also felt the same, we conducted an Instagram poll:

'Ask for Angela':

Ask Angela is a national campaign to tackle sexual harassment, where individuals can ask for help at the bar by asking for 'Angela'. The information is placed on the inside of toilet doors as a discrete way to learn about this procedure. 73% of individuals knew about this.

‘Report + Support’:

Report + Support was created by Warwick University, which allows for anonymous reporting, and continued support for sexual assault survivors. The percentage of individuals aware of this system was worryingly low, in contrast to the high awareness around 'Ask for Angela'.

What we did:
We thought the most effective way to spread the message regarding the 'Report + Support' system would be to place information on the back of toilet doors, just like ‘Ask for Angela’.

Now, all the toilet cubicles in our SU (around 30) have a 'Report + Support' poster under every ‘Ask Angela’ sign. The poster we made has a QR code for quick and easy access to the 'Report + Support' system. 

To spread this message further, we decided to approach The Director of Student Experience and Progression in the Psychology Department. She put the poster on the March 2020 newsletter that was sent out to all students and staff in the Psychology Department. https://sway.office.com/IU8yjPaS7p0sFnTU?ref=email

Persuasion techniques:

Our initial email to the SU President was very detailed as we used multiple techniques in order to build a highly persuasive argument. 

• Statistics: Clear facts that help to create a convincing argument (Abelson, 2012).
• Similarity: The Yale approach suggests that having similarity between the speaker and the recipient can make the message more persuasive (Hovland, Janis, & Kelley, 1953). For example, you can have high similarity by having similar attitudes (Byrne, Bond, & Diamond, 1969).
• Social Norms: Social and cultural norms often influence our behaviour: we are highly influenced by the behaviour of others (Dolan et al., 2012).
• Reciprocity: The social norm that if you do something for someone, they feel the need to return the favour (Cialdini & Cialdini, 1993).
• Incentives: Our behaviour is determined by mental shortcuts that we have regarding incentives (e.g. strongly avoiding losses and preference for gains (Dolan et al., 2012).
• Commitment: People generally want to behave consistently with their public promises (e.g. if you publicly state that you will do something, you are more likely to) (Dolan et al., 2012).
• Just Ask: Getting what you want, is highly correlated with asking for what you want. This is because there is a social cost attached to rejecting a request (Flynn & Lake, 2008).

Techniques that we used heavily in our project:

Establishing Norms -

One technique we focused on throughout our project was establishing subjective norms. This is a technique proposed by Ajzen (1991) in his theory of planned behaviour. He proposes that one’s behaviour is partly dependent on their subjective norms (e.g. what they perceive as the norm, based on what they see and hear others doing). Therefore, we decided to manipulate the subjective norm of the venues by telling the managment about other venues that are accredited with GNOC.

This approach is based on the tendency of humans to conform to the behaviour of others: by highlighting what others are doing, people are more likely to want to behave consistently with them (Burchell, Rettie, & Patel, 2013). Burchell et al. (2013) emphasise how the impact of social norms can be maximised by using appropriate reference groups, particularly one that the target group identifies with. Therefore, for each venue that we targeted, the social norm was created using venues like their own. For example in our emails to:

The SU:

“They have accredited 19 other University Student Unions, with Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, Leicester and Royal Holloway being those included, to only name a few.”

Other venues:

“They have accredited a wide range of licensed premises including fabric, Ballie Ballerson, Snobs, All Bar One, The Village Underground, Ministry of Sound, The Brighton Dome and a wide range of Wetherspoons, Fullers and Stonegate pubs.”

Furthermore, as Dolan et al. (2012) emphasised, norms may need reinforcing. When we didn't get a response from some clubs, the follow-up email we sent reinforced how other clubs in Leamington were getting on board with the GNOC accreditation:

“There have been some very positive responses from other venues in Leamington Spa, with some going forward with the accreditation process.”

Why we used this technique?

Establishing social norms was a quick and effective way to make the venues more likely to agree to the accreditation. We had easy access to this information as GNOC post their accredited venues on their website. Using social norms to change behaviour is a robust technique, with successful outcomes in various different contexts such as increasing the reuse of hotel towels, reducing theft in National Parks and decreasing alcohol consumption in University students (Cialdini et al., 2006; DeJong et al., 2006; Goldstein, Cialdini, Griskevicius, 2008).

Reciprocity -

Another technique that we felt was really important throughout our project was the norm of reciprocity. This technique is one of Cialdini's six persuasion principles and uses the idea that if you do something for someone they feel the need return the favour (Cialdini & Cialdini, 1993). There is general consensus that reciprocity is an evolutionary principle that guides human behaviour (Cialdini, Green, & Rusch, 1992).

We reinforced how we were helping GNOC by: 

1. Keeping them updated with the successes we were having (Altoria/Smack/Neon).
2. Telling them about the effort we were putting in to try and get our SU and other venues in Leamington Spa accredited with them.

Therefore, when we asked GNOC for materials, they did not hesitate and were more than happy to help us. They also provided us with further advice and information throughout our project. This reciprocal relationship with the GNOC team helped us to push our aim of getting the SU and other venues accredited.

We also used reciprocity to reinforce to both the SU and other venues how we would do them a favour, in return to them getting accredited with GNOC:

To the SU:

“We are keen to see this formalise and are more than happy to help you publicise this on campus and showcase how our SU are supporting the safety of students.”

To other clubs:

“We would love to help you with any promotion or marketing to spread the word about the steps your venue is taking to make it safer.”

Why we used this technique?

Research has found that reciprocity is effective when the individual can see their long-term self-interest in the outcomes (Becker, 1960; Gouldner, 1960). Homans (1974) suggested that people reciprocate as they believe this guarantees the stability of positive long term outcomes. This concept can be applied to our project, for example:

GNOC: The long term self-interest of GNOC is that they want to get as many venues accredited with them as possible to tackle sexual assault. Therefore, it is in their best interest to support us in our efforts to get venues accredited with them.

Warwick SU: By offering to publicise the University’s effort on tackling sexual assault, there is a long term self-interest for the President of the SU. Accreditation would not only increase his reputation, but also the reputation of the University.

Familiarity principle -

Throughout our project we aimed to increase the President's and management teams' familiarity with both GNOC and with us. To do this, we remained persistent in our communications. 

This is all based on the familiarity principle (also known as the mere exposure effect), which is the idea that we tend to like things merely because they are familiar to us. Therefore, the more that an individual is exposed to someone or something, the more they would develop a preference for it (Zajonc, 2001). This has been demonstrated in many studies, where preferences have been developed for fruit juices, nonsense words and syllables as well as novel vegetables in toddlers (Hausner, Olsen, & Møller, 2012; Pliner, 1982; Zajonc, 1968).

Therefore, as familiarity increases liking for things, we ensured our communications with the different management teams were repetitive (e.g. by sending multiple emails and phone calls). With the President of the SU, we were also repetitive in our face-to-face contact. We even bumped into him in social situations which maximised his exposure to us.

Why did we use this technique?

With the management teams and SU President as our target audiences, it was most appropriate to communicate in professional contexts, such as over email. Byron (2008) emphasises how email communications that attempt to convey positive emotions, may actually be perceived as neutral due to the lack of social cues present in the text. Therefore, we needed to take measures so that the management teams and President perceived us more positively. Research demonstrates that authority figures, such as CEO’s, are more likely to do things for those who they were familiar with than those that they weren’t (Ang, de Jong, & van der Poel, 2014). Therefore, we used the familiarity principle to increase their liking towards us, thus increasing their likelihood of complying with our accreditation request.

With regards to spreading the message about GNOC, research emphasises how one person repeating a message three times is just as effective as three people communicating the same message once (Weaver, Garcia, Schwarz, & Miller, 2007). Therefore, we decided that only one of us needed to make contact with each venue. However, contact was made multiple times to make our message appear more prevalent.

Future research and what we learnt:

Although we were effective with emails to Altoria, Smack and Neon, perhaps initial face-to-face contact would have been more persuasive and effective: it allows for you to portray your passion, to develop relationships and discourages rejection. We learned that EMAILS ARE EASY TO IGNORE (especially ones that are too detailed and convoluted). Hence, we refined our emailing technique after the first few emails.

It is important to note that this project had time constraints. Convincing venues to become accredited with GNOC may take a lot longer than ten weeks due to slow communications and the accreditation timing. Therefore, despite getting three clubs to start the accreditation process, we have not been able to witness anything being implemented yet. Nevertheless, we are glad to have instigated the clubs communications with GNOC.

By Rachel Bailey, Lois Hayes & Shray Khanna

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