NCT06630598

Impacts of the VEGA Family Violence Education Resources for Psychology Trainees

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

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 90 (estimated)
• Sponsor: University of Ottawa · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

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 [e-mail]

Conditions

• Family Violence

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
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 modules include: Know About Family Violence in Canada Creating Safety Recognizing and Responding Safely to Child Maltreatment Recognizing and Responding Safely to Intimate Partner Violence Voices of those with Lived Experiences of Family Violence

Timeline

• Start date: 2024-10-30
• Primary completion: 2025-03-01
• Completion: 2025-03-01
• First posted: 2024-10-08
• Last updated: 2024-11-26

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Canada