“Safe, Respected and Free from Violence”: An evaluation of primary prevention projects

The ‘Mums Can Dads Can/Girls Can Boys Can' Town Camp community campaign was created to engage with families and communities in Alice Springs and challenge rigid gender stereotypes. ‘Old Ways are Strong’ aims to develop community-driven media resources to promote healthy relationships and prevent violence against Aboriginal women.

The evaluation aims to analyse the impact of the projects on the participants’ attitudes towards gender, violence and Aboriginal culture. The study will also assess the extent to which resources and media developed by the two projects effectively communicate key anti-violence, anti-racist, and gender equitable messaging to its audience.

The evaluation aims to contribute to building the evidence-base to support the development of primary prevention work in the Northern Territory.

Mixed research methods and participatory approaches will be used, meaning that the EQI will recruit and train staff from the partnership projects to conduct the quantitative data collection. We are also conducting interviews with staff to assess workforce development and undertaking surveys to assess the effectiveness of communications channels.

This study will partner with community-based organisations to produce research on primary prevention in the Northern Territory and primary prevention with Aboriginal people – a significant gap in the evidence-base. The research findings will be directed at improving the two projects, as well as providing key lessons for the domestic, family, and sexual violence sector in the Northern Territory. Furthermore, the study aims to construct a baseline of participants attitudes and beliefs about gender, violence, and Aboriginal culture through the pre-survey. Such an attitudinal survey has not been undertaken with Aboriginal communities in Central Australia before. Some national attitudinal surveys have been conducted but have excluded much of the Northern Territory population as they have been conducted via telephone using highly complex language and concepts. Therefore, although the study is small in scope, it can potentially yield important insights and produce valuable lessons for the project partnership as well as the DFSV sector in the Northern Territory.