Impacts of the VEGA Family Violence Education Resources for Psychology Trainees

University of Ottawa

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Family Violence

Treatments: Behavioral: Online Family Violence Education Resource

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06630598

H-06-24-10490

Details and patient eligibility

About

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.

Full 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 [e-mail]

Enrollment: 90 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

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.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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90 participants in 2 patient groups

VEGA Family Violence Education Resources

Experimental group

Description:

Students in this arm will receive access to the online VEGA Family Violence Education Resources and will be asked to complete modules covering information about family violence in Canada, creating safety for survivors in clinical settings, recognizing and responding to child maltreatment and intimate partner violence, three interactive learning scenarios, and voices of those with lived experiences of family violence.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Online Family Violence Education Resource

No Training

No Intervention group

Description:

Students in this arm will not receive access to the training until the end of the pre- and post-training data collection for the Arm 1 group.