WITHDRAWN: Friends As Agents of Dating Violence Prevention: Efficacy Evaluation of an Intervention to Adolescents Based on Bystander Approach

Friends are preferred source of helping teens, though not always provide models of effective responses to deal with situations of dating violence between couples. Based in the premise, this study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention based on peer and bystander approach to prevent the dating violence, investigating its effect on the friendship quality, empathy, bystander attitude in response to dating violence, number of friends involved in dating violence, previous help-seeking and help-giving behaviors, dating violence indicators and intention to help in the context. Process indicators were used to monitor the degree involviment of the participants during the intervention. 42 adolescents took part randomly allocated to two groups, experimental group (GC, n=20) and control (CG, n=22). The GE received a brief intervention on healthy and violent dating relationship, quality friendship on peer network and bystander’ role as GC didn't receive any intervention. Statistically significant differences between sex indicated that men’s GE suffered fewer threats than the women in the post-test compared. Positives effects were observed on empathy and bystander attitudes of, with 50% increase in the intention to help and reduction over 50% in the number of friends involved in dating violence for women, in addition to improvements in friendship quality for men. Future directions for new efficacy tests and implications for the development of interventions based on bystander approach are discussed.