No Child’s Play (Kein Kinderspiel)

OVERVIEW

No Child’s Play is a school-based theater performance designed to improve children’s ability to recognize and react to uncomfortable situations with adults that can lead to sexual abuse.  An evaluation of this study in which schools were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions or a wait list control group, found that students that watched the performance either live or on DVD had a significant increase in ability to correctly respond to situations with adults.

DESCRIPTION OF PROGRAM

Target population: Elementary school students

No Child’s Play (Kein Kinderspiel in German) is a 60-minute performance designed to improve children’s ability to handle uncomfortable interactions with adults, for instance, being asked to keep a secret about which they feel distressed.   The play depicts two siblings who are in a series of situations that might entail the risk of sexual abuse.  The characters must decide the proper response to the adult’s behavior.  At the time of the decision, Huggy the Kangaroo works with the characters and the audience on the best way to respond to the situation.  Afterwards, the characters sing about the previous scene with the audience.  No Child’s Play includes a three-hour training for teachers and a three-hour information session for parents during the evening.

EVALUATION(S) OF PROGRAM

Krahe, B., & Knappert, L. (2009). A group-randomized evaluation of a theatre-based sexual abuse prevention programme for primary school children in Germany. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 19, 321-329.

Evaluated population:  Participants in this study were 148 first and second grade students from three schools in a suburban district of Berlin, Germany.  Seventy-eight of the participants were female, and the average age was 7.5 years. 

Approach: Schools were randomly assigned to participate in one of three conditions: watching the live performance of the No Child’s Play show (Live group) (n = 44), watching the play on DVD (DVD group) (n = 55), or a wait-list control group (n = 49).   The DVD group watched a recorded live performance, and the teachers did not have a training session beforehand.   Students were assessed at baseline, post-test, and at a two-week follow-up on self-protective skills, which was defined as providing the correct answers to various scenarios, including the ability to distinguish between “good” and “bad” secrets, being able to talk to someone if something seems strange, feeling confident to say no, distinguishing between “good” and “bad” touch, realizing that one should never go with a stranger, and paying attention to the needs of others.  These were measured through presenting the students with eight scenarios. 

Results: At post-test, scores on self-protective skills were significantly higher in the Live (a large effect size of 1.03) and DVD (a large effect size of 0.9) groups when compared with the control group.  At the two-week follow-up, scores were significantly higher in the Live (a large effect size of 1.06) and DVD (a large effect size of 0.85) groups when compared with the control group.  The Live and DVD groups did not significantly differ. Differences between students in the treatment and control groups at baseline were not assessed.

 SOURCES FOR MORE INFORMATION

Contact Information

Lena Knappert

Email: Lena.Knappert@gmx.de

References:

Krahe, B., & Knappert, L. (2009). A group-randomized evaluation of a theatre-based sexual abuse prevention programme for primary school children in Germany. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 19, 321-329.

KEYWORDS: Children, Elementary, Males and Females (co-ed), School-based, Other Social/Emotional Health, Other Safety, Suburban.

Program information last updated 9/6/11.

© Child Trends 2003