Impacts of the VEGA Family Violence Education Resources for Psychology Trainees

Official title

The Effects of the ©Violence, Evidence, Guidance, and Action (VEGA) Family Violence Education Resources on Canadian Clinical Psychology Students' Attitudes, Knowledge, and Behaviours

Overview

The current research project aims to assess the effectiveness of the ©Violence, Evidence, Guidance, and Action (VEGA) Family Violence Education Resources (VEGA Project, 2019) in improving the knowledge, self-efficacy, and clinical responses of clinical psychology doctoral students to family violence in clinical settings. The VEGA on-line training is a collection of family violence online education resources designed to inform health and social service practitioners about family violence in a Canadian context, including definitions of family violence, mandatory reporting duties, effective responding to survivors, and more. Participants in this trial will be doctoral students recruited from accredited Clinical Psychology programs across Canada. Participants will be assigned to an intervention or wait-list control group, and the outcome measures consist of knowledge and attitudes about family violence, as well as measures of skills relevant to appropriately responding to survivors in clinical settings. Further, participants will be invited to complete a qualitative interview after the intervention to discuss overall impressions of the training and other ways the training changed their perspectives, if at all, on family violence.

Detailed description

The goal of the current research is to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the ©Violence, Evidence, Guidance, and Action (VEGA), Family Violence Education Resources (VEGA Project, 2019) among a sample of clinical psychology graduate students across Canadian universities to assess whether it is effective in improving responses to child maltreatment and intimate partner violence (IPV) (collectively referred too throughout as "family violence") in clinical settings. For this study, students belonging to accredited Clinical Psychology doctoral programs from Canadian universities will be randomized into either (a) an intervention group that will complete the online VEGA Family Violence Education Resources, OR (b) a control group who will not complete the training (but who will have the opportunity to do so following the completion of outcome data collection ; wait-list control). Throughout this evaluation study, a variety of pre- and post-training outcome measures will be administered participants; these measures are intended to assess reactions to the training, changes in family violence knowledge, changes in attitudes toward IPV and child maltreatment, and clinically relevant behaviours in responding to suspicions and disclosures of family violence by clients/patients in clinical practice settings. After completing the measures and the training, a subset of randomly selected students from the intervention group will be invited to participate in a one-on-one qualitative interview with a member of the research team via Zoom, during which they will be asked to share their perspectives on the training and how it impacted/may impact their work (or not) with clients who have experienced IPV and/or child maltreatment. Information provided from the quantitative measures and qualitative interviews will allow us to answer the following questions: (1) Was the training engaging and relevant to clinical psychology students? (2) Was the training able to improve the knowledge and self-efficacy of students regarding family violence? (3) Was the training able to change behaviours and improve the response of clinical psychology students to clients (or future clients) experiencing family violence in their professional training settings? Note: Used with permission from © 2020 VEGA Project, McMaster University. All rights reserved. All questions regarding the use and evaluation of the VEGA Family Violence Education Resources, or the VEGA Project more generally, should be directed to Dr. Melissa Kimber at vega@mcmaster.ca

Interventions

• Behavioral Online Family Violence Education Resource
  The VEGA Family Violence Education Resources (© 2020 VEGA Project, McMaster University) is an on-line suite of educational resources that target professionals who are likely to encounter survivors of family violence in professional and clinical settings. The resources provide information about family violence, appropriate clinical responses, legal obligations, and more. The resources are broken down into several training modules and include three interactive learning scenarios. The training modu

Primary outcome measures

• Changes in perceived knowledge and preparedness, and opinions about family violence as measured by the Modified Provider Readiness to Manage Intimate Partner Violence Survey Items (Modified PREMIS) [Time frame: Week one (pre-training), and again Week four (post-training)]
• Reactions - Interest and Relevancy of Intervention Material [Time frame: During Weeks two through three - completed during training period]
• Changes in VEGA content knowledge [Time frame: Week one (pre-training), and again Week four (post-training)]
• Performing relevant clinical behaviours in clinical settings with clients, as measured by a Behavioural Checklist [Time frame: One month post-training.]

Secondary outcome measures (2)

• Changes in attitudes towards evidence-based practice and interventions as measured by the Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale (EBPAS) [Time frame: Week one (pre-training), and again Week four (post-training)]
• Interview on experiences with the VEGA family resources [Time frame: One month post-training.]

Eligibility criteria

Inclusion criteria

• Be a student in the Clinical Psychology graduate program of a Canadian university.
• Be engaged in clinical work as part of program requirements
• Speak and read English
• Have internet access

Exclusion criteria

-Currently participating in any other training relating to child maltreatment or intimate partner violence outside of mandatory or elective course material.

Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.

Healthy volunteers: Yes

Study design

Allocation

Randomized

Model

Parallel assignment

Masking

Open label

Primary purpose

Health services research

Study locations

Canada · 1 center

• University of Ottawa - Child Wellbeing Lab — Ottawa

Identifiers

NCT: NCT06630598 · H-06-24-10490

Primary sources (government registries)

• ClinicalTrials.gov (US NIH)

View this study on ClinicalTrials.gov ↗