'Know When to Use Your Pausebutton: Sexual Assault is Not a Game’ Poster Campaign

Initial Research

In order to develop an improved understanding of the situations and issues a teenage boy is confronted with, as well as his attitudes, behaviors, daily influences and media preferences, the media project began with a thorough examination of the appropriate research in three key areas, looking in particular at how they relate to the problems of sexual violence:

• Research literature on key developmental issues for boys in the target age group
• Focus groups involving boys in the target age group across New York State
• Review of other anti-sexual campaigns developed by other programs and coalitions across the US and Canada.

[Read the background report (pdf)]

Message Development

In order to assist in the development of the anti-sexual violence messages, the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault contracted The Michael Cohen Group to conduct a multi-phase research project. Phase one of the project examined the context within which boys understand the concept of sexual assault, as well as investigating the types of public service/behavioral messages that resonate with them. [Read the Phase I report (pdf)]

Phase two of the research explored boy's reactions to iterations of sample messages in the interest of refining a final version. The poster designs were developed by Yoe! Studios. [Read the testing report (pdf)] [Read the 2nd round message testing report (pdf)]

Evaluation

• Recall of the poster is over 50% for both boys and girls, revealing that the poster definitely made an impression and children remember seeing it.
• Of the children who remembered seeing the poster, 91% of boys and 94% of girls said that it made them think about the issue.
• There are shifts in children's descriptions of their decision-making styles, and more children would ask someone else what to do in a situation about which they felt uncertain.
• The number of boys who say that they stop to think before making a decision rises from 76% to 92%

[Read the sumary of findings (pdf)] [Read the full report (pdf)] [Read the focus group report (pdf)]

To get copies of the Poster

Please send your mailing information to contact-us@nycagainstrape.org