Introduction

The bystander approach to prevention of violence against women is predicated upon empowering bystanders to intervene in a positive, pro-social way upon witnessing an event that they recognise to be problematic. The intervention made has potentially powerful social effects: it sends a clear message to the culprit about the social unacceptability of their behaviour, while concurrently alerting other bystanders to the appropriateness of challenging it. Constant and reinforced messaging about the unacceptability of behaviour within communities can thus shift social norms as to what constitutes desirable behaviour. While this narrative appears instinctive, bystander programmes are multi-faceted interventions underpinned by complex and sophisticated theory. The growing evidence base, predominantly from the US, indicates the aptitude of bystander intervention for university settings, its potential importance and promise denoted by legal and funding requirements for US universities (Campus SaVE Act, 2013; DeGue, 2014).

Aware of the promise of bystander interventions from the developing evidence base, and of the work done by the National Union of Students (NUS) and Alison Phipps (for example NUS, 2011) in exposing the problem of violence against women in UK universities, in late 2013 Public Health England commissioned an evidence review of bystander intervention for this setting (Fenton et al, 2016), to identify best evidence and practice from which to develop a public health intervention toolkit for all universities to use for the prevention of sexual and domestic violence (SDV), which became The Intervention Initiative (Fenton et al, 2014, hereafter referred to as TII).

The creation of TII at the University of the West of England was preceded by an intensive development period including the trialling of existing resources with student focus groups, and extensive consultation with an Expert Advisory Group (EAG) and a Student Bystander Committee (SBC). Our EAG comprised national and regional experts in SDV and our SBC was recruited from across the university and comprised students of different genders, sexualities, ethnicities, ages, years of study, disciplines and countries of origin. TII was published online in 2014, becoming the first evidence-based bystander programme for the sector, and is available free of charge. It is an eight-hour facilitated intervention designed to be delivered to small groups over time.