Program Profile: Coaching Boys Into Men (Middle School)

This program aims to prevent sexual violence in middle school male athletes. The program is rated Ineffective. There were no statistically significant differences between treatment and control group athletes in reports of abuse (relationship, cybersexual, or sexual), sexual harassment, negative bystander behaviors, sex-equitable attitudes, or intention to intervene. Treatment group athletes reported statistically significantly more positive bystander behaviors and recognized more signs of abuse.

An Ineffective rating implies that implementing the program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

An Ineffective rating implies that implementing the program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes either 1) one study conducted in multiple sites; or 2) two or three studies, each conducted at a different site. Learn about how we make the multisite determination.

Program Goals/Target Population

Coaching Boys Into Men (Middle School) trains athletic coaches to hold guided discussions with their male athletes about respectful language and behaviors, to encourage them to intervene when witnessing harmful and problematic behavior perpetrated by their peers and to challenge hypermasculine behavior and homophobia. The goal of the program is to reduce dating abuse and sexual violence (including sexual harassment and sexual assault).

Key Personnel

Middle school coaches deliver program materials to male student athletes, who may be participating in a variety of different sports such as basketball, wrestling, baseball, golf, lacrosse, swimming, track and field, volleyball, cross country, football, and soccer. Violence Prevention Advocates are also required to bring the program to communities by recruiting coaches, hosting trainings, and providing 1 hour of weekly technical support to coaches. Advocates are community leaders and often parents, or school administrators, or from rape crisis centers.

Program Activities

Violence Prevention Advocates provide a 60-minute training to participating coaches about program content and how to deliver it. Coaches are provided a “coaches toolkit” with resources, including a guidebook and 12 cards with prompts and information for each day’s lesson. Coaches deliver weekly 15-minute lessons to their male athletes that are integrated into games or practices over the course of the sports season.

Coaches are encouraged to ask athletes to sign the Coaching Boys Into Men Pledge, or a similar pledge in the coaches’ own words. The pledge states: “I commit to take a stand against relationship abuse, and I believe that violence is neither a solution nor a sign of strength. By taking this pledge, I publicly denounce violence against women and girls, and I understand that by treating everyone with respect, I am a role model to others. A world of respect starts today and starts with me” (Coach Respect Through Sports—Coaching Boys N.d.).

In addition to the weekly lessons, coaches are encouraged to look for and respond to “teachable moments” with their athletes. Teachable moments can be either positive or problematic situations or behaviors that coaches use to model positive behaviors and reinforce concepts from the weekly lessons. Coaches are also encouraged to recognize and highlight positive behaviors in their athletes, both on an individual basis and in the larger school and community. For example, coaches are provided with guidance to announce the athletes’ participation in Coaching Boys Into Men at halftime during a game, and to ask fans to recite the program pledge (Coach Respect Through Sports—Coaching Boys N.d.). These efforts are intended to encourage commitment from the athletes and to spread a message about violence prevention.

Study

Miller and colleagues (2020) used a randomized controlled trial design to investigate the effectiveness of the Coaching Boys Into Men program, implemented in middle schools in Pennsylvania. Initially, 26 middle schools were randomized to the treatment condition, and 26 middle schools were randomized to the control condition. After randomization, five schools withdrew from the treatment condition and four schools withdrew from the control condition. Later, 14 teams from the treatment group and 24 teams from the control group declined to participate. Athletes in sixth through eighth grade sports who completed the baseline survey and had signed assent and consent forms, or who a had a waiver for consent through their school, were eligible to participate. Two schools, one treatment and one control, were removed due to lack of parental consent. This resulted in a final sample of 973 male student–athletes from 41 private and public middle schools (20 treatment schools and 21 control schools). Sports included in the sample were basketball, wrestling, baseball, golf, lacrosse, swimming, track and field, volleyball, cross country, football, soccer.

Students were enrolled in the study from spring 2015 through fall 2016. Athletes completed 15-minute online surveys at schools at the start and end of each sports season, about 4 to 6 weeks after baseline, and again 1 year after baseline. In the treatment group, prevention advocates from local rape crisis centers and domestic violence agencies provided an introduction to the program through 1-hour training sessions and continued to provide support to coaches throughout the sport season. In the control group, coaches at control schools were asked to interact with their male athletes as usual.

There were no statistically significant demographic differences between male athletes in the treatment group and male athletes in the control group. The treatment group (n = 518) consisted of fifth graders (0.6 percent), sixth graders (12.0 percent), seventh graders (34.0 percent), eighth graders (49.4 percent), and ninth graders (0.6 percent). Of athletes in the treatment group, 49.8 percent were White, 31.9 percent were non-Hispanic Black, 3.1 percent were Asian, 1.5 percent were Hispanic, 5.2 percent were multiracial, and 4.4 were “other race.” Most of the athletes (87.3 percent) were born in the United States. They reported that their parents completed some high school (2.5 percent), were high school graduates (12.9 percent), completed some college or technical school (9.1 percent), graduated college (28.4 percent), or completed graduate school (20.1 percent); 22.2 percent of student–athletes did not report parent education.

The control group (n = 455) consisted of sixth graders (7.7 percent), seventh graders (38.0 percent), eighth graders (51.9 percent) and ninth graders (0.7 percent). Of the athletes in the control group, 59.8 percent were White, 25.7 percent were non-Hispanic Black, 1.3 percent were Hispanic, 0.9 percent were Asian, 6.4 percent were multiracial, and 3.7 percent were “other race.” Most of the athletes were born in the United States. (93.9 percent). They reported that their parents completed some high school (1.8 percent), were high school graduates (11.7 percent), completed some college or technical school (7.9 percent), graduated college (28.6 percent), or completed graduate school (27.7 percent); 18.9 percent of student–athletes did not report parent education.

There were seven outcomes of interest: a) positive bystander behavior; b) negative bystander behavior; c) adolescent relationship abuse, d) cybersexual abuse, or sexual harassment; e) recognition of abuse; f) sex-equitable attitudes; and g) intention to intervene with peers. Positive and negative bystander behaviors were measured using investigator-developed items. Participants were asked whether they had witnessed nine various abusive behaviors among their friends in the last 3 months. For each of the nine they had witnessed, they next indicated their responses from a list that included two negative intervention behaviors (“I didn’t say anything” and “I laughed or went along with it”) and four positive intervention behaviors (“I told the person in public that acting like that was not okay”; “I told the person in private that acting like that was not okay”; “I talked to our coach about it privately”; “I talked to another adult [not coach]”). Positive intervention scores were a sum of the number of positive intervention behaviors checked across the nine items, while negative intervention behaviors were a sum of the negative intervention behaviors indicated across the same nine items.

Sex-equitable attitudes were measured with mean scores from an 11-item scale with questions modified from Barker’s Gender-Equitable Norms Scale (Pulerwitz and Barker 2007). An example item is “If a girl is raped it is often because she did not say no clearly enough.” Responses range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” on a five-point scale. Recognition of abuse was measured with mean scores from a 12-item scale with response options for each item (i.e., “threatening to hit them”) also on a five-point scale, ranging from “not abusive” to “extremely abusive.” Intentions to intervene with peers were measured using eight investigator-developed items. Each item indicated an abusive behavior (i.e., telling sexual jokes that disrespect women and girls), and participants report how likely they would be to do something to stop that behavior. Responses range from “very unlikely” to “very likely.”

Athletes who reported having had a heterosexual dating relationship were asked about perpetrating specific adolescent relationship behaviors toward a female partner in the past 3 months. A dichotomous composite score was calculated by combining three scales: a 10-item measure of adolescent relationship abuse (revised from the Conflict Tactics Scales, Straus et al. 1996), a 5-item measure of sexual harassment, and an 8-item measure of cybersexual abuse. Participants were assigned a score of yes or no based on whether they endorsed any of the 23 items across the three measures—for example, “called them names, like ‘ugly’ or ‘stupid.’”

Treatment effects were tested using mixed effects models that accounted for individual and school-level clustering, baseline scores on the outcomes being predicted, time, and treatment group membership. The analysis predicting any relationship abuse, sexual harassment, or cybersexual abuse was also adjusted for having ever dated at baseline. Exploratory analyses were conducted to test program effects on self-reported homophonic teasing. Subgroup analysis was conducted to test whether intervention intensity affected the strength of the program effects. Intensity-adjusted intervention effects were assessed by assigning athletes whose coaches delivered the full intensity program (meaning they covered at least nine cards over a minimum of 4 weeks) an intensity score of 1.0 and assigning athletes whose coaches did not meet these implementation benchmarks a score between 0.5 and 1.0 based on the proportion of the program they administered.

Study

Jones and colleagues (2021) used the sample from the randomized controlled trial described in Study 1 (Miller et al. 2020) to investigate program effects on student reports of any dating abuse, any sexual harassment, and any sexual assault 1 year after baseline.

A measure of dating abuse revised from the Conflict Tactics Scales (Straus et al. 1996) asked participants whether they had engaged in 10 behaviors toward someone with whom they were in a relationship—for example, “yelled at them or destroyed something that belonged to them.” A yes to any of these questions was coded as a yes for dating abuse. Sexual harassment and sexual assault were measured using subsets of items from the dating abuse measure. Endorsing any of three items (for example, “showed friends or posted pictures of them naked or doing something sexual”) was coded as a yes for any sexual harassment, and endorsing either of two items (for example, “convinced them to have sex, after they had said no a few times”) was coded as a yes for any sexual assault.

At baseline, 8.9 percent of treatment group athletes and 5.1 percent of control group athletes reported any dating abuse, 5.0 percent of treatment group athletes and 3.1 percent of control group athletes reported any sexual harassment, and 2.9 percent of treatment group athletes and 1.3 percent of control group athletes reported any sexual assault. Program effects were tested using maximum likelihood estimates between the treatment and control groups that accounted for all available data, and student- and school-level clustering of observations. No subgroup analysis was conducted.

A Coaches Kit available on the program website includes a guidebook for coaches, cards to guide weekly lessons, and other resources for getting started, troubleshooting, and promoting the program to the wider school and community. The program website contains additional training resources, implementation resources, and evaluation tools. The program also requires that coaches fill out a tracking sheet indicating which cards were administered on which dates, and for how long.

As part of an exploratory analysis, Miller and colleagues (2020) looked at self-reported homophobic teasing. The study authors did not find a statistically significant difference between treatment and control athletes 1 year after baseline in self-reported homophobic teasing.

In addition, Miller and colleagues (2020) estimated intensity-adjusted intervention effects by substituting an intensity score in place of the binary program participation variable. This revealed statistically significant differences favoring the treatment group athletes in positive bystander behaviors, equitable gender attitudes, and a combined score for adolescent relationship abuse, cybersexual abuse, and sexual harassment perpetration, compared with control group athletes.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Pulerwitz, Julie, and Gary Barker. 2007. “Measuring Attitudes Toward Gender Norms Among Young Men in Brazil: Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the GEM Scale.” Men and Masculinities 10:322–38.

Straus, Murray A., Sherry L. Hamby, Sue Boney–McCoy, and David B. Sugarman, 1996. “The Revised Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS2): Development and Preliminary Psychometric Data.” Journal of Family Issues 17:283–316.

Coach Respect Through Sports—Coaching Boys. N.d. The Coaches Kit. West Palm Beach, Fla.: Futures Without Violence.

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Mentoring for Youth Development

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

	Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types
	Education - Multiple education outcomes
	Mental Health & Behavioral Health - Psychological functioning
	Mental Health & Behavioral Health - Cognitive functioning
	Mental Health & Behavioral Health - Social functioning
	Drugs & Substance Abuse - Multiple substances

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?