New Delhi [India], July 19 (ANI/BusinessWire India): Gawain initiated a randomized controlled trial (hereinafter referred to as RCT) in the slums of Delhi in May 2022 to test the effectiveness of the rape prevention methods which has been developed for slums.
Gawain is actively contributing to eradicating rape crime, a major social issue in India. One of Gawain’s goals is to establish the world’s first evidence-based rape prevention model. The representative/Founder & CEO of Gawain, Masayoshi Sakurai, realized through his own field survey experience that “Numerous government officials and NGOs are working on this serious issue of rape, but mostly through Mindset Intervention, such as education.
These efforts are also important, but it takes time to get effective results, and it does not help the women suffering right now. What is needed urgently is an inexpensive Environmental Intervention crime method with immediate effect,” and initiated the method development.
The objective of this RCT project is to test the effectiveness of the world’s first rape prevention method, known as the “Community Self-Defense method (CSD method)”, developed by Gawain. This RCT project will be supervised by Professor Takayuki Harada of Tsukuba University, a specialist in clinical psychology, criminal psychology, and mental health. The project will be enforced by a grand team formed by Gawain representatives, Indian researchers, and coordinators.
The CSD method is an Environmental Intervention that uses the environmental characteristics of slums and their affinity for sound. This organizes self-defense with the concept of “Band together”. The experimental method is an intervention RCT (Randomized Controlled Trial). The CSD method consists of four simple steps: 1) Distribution, 2) Sound, 3) Unite, and 4) Improvement. As the experimental site, the company chose a slum district in Delhi province, which has a high rate of rape crime and where people have the lowest crime prevention measures.
Gawain gathered 500 women living in the target district/targeted slums in Delhi as collaborators, randomized them according to the project guidelines, and shared a manual to proceed with the preparation. The project was temporarily interrupted by the COVID but finally kicked off in May 2022 when the RCT was initiated with the CSD method.
This experiment will run for six months, starting from May 2022. Within the first month after distributing personal alarm bells, Gawain has started getting success stories from the method beneficiaries. One of the beneficiaries used the personal alarm bell to warn her stalker and alert the people in close proximity to come to the place of the sound and see what is happening.
When it was first successfully implemented in Orissa, 2019, the CSD method impacted the lives of approximately 600 women beneficiaries, of which 100 were direct and 500 indirect. With the ongoing project, the organisation aims to impact the lives of 1000 women beneficiaries residing in the slums of Delhi by December 2022.
According to Masayoshi, “We have placed a high value on impact evaluation since our early days. We will continue to verify their effectiveness correctly working with universities and researchers, and increase their social impact based on objective facts.”
Gawain believes that this research will lead to the development of highly reliable crime deterrence methods in the coming years.
RCT
RCT stands for “Randomized Controlled Trial”, and it is the most rigorous research method for measuring the effectiveness of a new intervention. It is used internationally for developing various fields such as medical care and environmental problems, and it is also known as an effective experimental method for crime deterrence.
Firstly, in this method, participants are randomly divided into two groups. For example, one group (the intervention group) will be intervened with preventative or ameliorating methods that would expect some effectiveness and usefulness through its crime deterrence research, and no intervention to the other group (Control group).
The results are verified by comparing the two groups by observing the crime situation after applying the method. Gawain is currently using the RTC to study what efforts and actions are effective in deterring crime.
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