Bystander Intentions to Intervene and Previous Sexual Violence Education: A Latent Class Analysis

Objective: Further nuance is required in our efforts to understand how we conceptualize bystander intervention. The purpose of this article is to use person-centered analysis to develop classes of students' intentions to intervene in high-risk and postassault situations, and to determine whether membership in classes is associated with the amount of sexual violence prevention education received. Method: Latent class analysis was performed with a sample of 7,146 undergraduate student survey responses to determine patterns and subgroups of bystander intentions to intervene. Latent class was then used as the dependent variable in a multinomial logistic regression model with gender, previous education, awareness of resources. level of exposure to messages about sexual violence, and social desirability as independent variables. Results: We found that a model with five classes best fit the data. The five classes were always interveners, never interveners, female-focused interveners, authority interveners, and friend-only interveners. Multinomial logistic regression analyses demonstrated that previous education, exposure to messages about sexual violence, awareness of resources, and gender are related to membership in the five latent classes. For example, respondents in the never intervener class reported less exposure to education and information about sexual violence on campus than all other groups, and they were more likely to be male. Conclusions: The findings suggest that intervening is not an "all-ornothing" prospect and that students likely view various intervention situations differently and are influenced by gender and previous education. Bystander prevention programs need to move toward addressing the variability of potential intervention situations.