Evaluation of the preventing lateral violence workshop in Adelaide, South Australia: Phase one survey responses

Education and awareness workshops are important resources to the Indigenous community in Australia to tackle difficult issues and situations within communities. It is equally important that such workshops are appropriately evaluated to ensure that they are relevant, refined and continued within communities. This paper focuses on an evaluation of the one-day Preventing Lateral Violence workshop. A sample of six workshops were conducted predominately in Adelaide in 2014 using pre, post and three months post workshop measures to determine the impact on participants. Phase 1 measured participant changes in four areas which were awareness, understanding, knowledge as well as prevention strategies of lateral violence. Analysis of the quantitative data revealed the workshops’ success as an intervention tool both at completion and three months after the workshops. The results indicated that participants understood and resonated with the terminology and the impact on self and others, recognized their experiences of lateral violence, and had an awareness of and developed strategies to combat lateral violence. The qualitative response to open-ended questions suggested that various strategies of education and the challenging of behaviours were in place even after three months. The implications of these findings are discussed