A-STOP Wise as Serpents Curriculum
EVALUATION REPORT

ISSUES TO CONSIDER

The curriculum suggests that classes view the video a little at a time over several sessions, or all at once at the last session. Students' open-ended responses indicate that watching the people on the video made a big impression on them, and the video made the dangers of being targeted for prostitution seem real. As a result, it seems likely that all parts of the curriculum are most effective when students have seen at least some of the video. Making the curriculum feel as real as possible to the students is crucial to students not denying the dangers, and helping them to be open-minded enough to learn the skills the "Wise as Serpents" curriculum offers the tools to teach. A-STOP staff may want to strongly recommend that teachers use the video, and that their students view at least part of the video early on in the course.

When teachers were asked why they would recommend the curriculum they did not generally describe anything about the curriculum itself. They said they would recommend it because it is necessary. This indicates that Wise as Serpents is the only curriculum of its kind which these teachers know about. This topic is a difficult one to bring up, especially with the age groups which need it most. It may be this combination of factors which makes having this curriculum with an integrated set of tools so valuable.

It is likely that the Wise as Serpents curriculum has a different effect on girls than it has on boys. It might therefore be beneficial in future research instruments to ask respondents to give their gender, so any gender differences can be examined.

In a course which strives to keep young people out of prostitution, measuring success is not an easy task. In addition to the sensitive nature of the topic, the intended outcome cannot be measured until several years after the young person's exposure to the program. A more cost-effective strategy might be to measure change in students' knowledge, skills and attitudes related to dangerous situations they might encounter. This would require finding out about students' knowledge both before and after the course, for example in a pre- and post-test. A valid pre- and post-test must be challenging enough that students are not able to answer questions correctly before they've gone through the course, as was the case with several questions on the Student Knowledge and Values Questionnaire.

The two data collection instruments reviewed in this report which were best able to give an indication of what students got out of the course were the following.

  1. The Student Evaluation Questionnaire which asked students to describe (in their own words) what they learned from the course
  2. The Student and Parent Phone Interview which asked students to describe (in their own words) the main point of the Wise as Serpents curriculum, and to describe some of the risks young people might encounter.

In these questions, students described situations they are cautious about, and how they keep themselves safe in these situations. Since they are open-ended, non-leading questions, students are not able to guess the answer but are required to imagine a situation on their own. This gives a convincing argument that students who answered these questions by describing a situation, along with how they would keep themselves safe, have really learned something about dangerous situations. If pre- and post-tests are to be used in the future, a focus on skills as well as knowledge might be useful. For example, open-ended questions might ask respondents to describe what options they would have in different dangerous situations, and students would be encouraged to list as many options as they can think of. A questionnaire might also ask students to list signs that they may be in danger.

Interviews done by telephone make it possible to probe participants' responses, which makes them especially valuable for collecting in-depth information about the extent of students' knowledge. Interviewing participants in person may prove to be a superior method of collecting data, since the interviewer would be better able to establish a rapport with the young person.

Another possibility would be to conduct focus groups at the beginning, middle, and end of sessions. Intimidation and manipulation are vital factors in the dynamics of prostitution. Students' peers can be a protective factor if their cultural values are pro-social. For these reasons it might be appropriate to include the influence of students' peers while observing student attitudes. In addition, researchers may want to observe / participate in Wise as Serpents sessions along with students, to better understand how students react to the ideas being taught, and how their peers influence their opinions and reactions.