Empowerment Self-Defense Training for the Prevention of Victimization of Transgender Women

The proposed project aims to develop and refine a tailored Empowerment Self Defense (ESD) violence prevention training for diverse TW through a series of sequential Aims: a) develop an initial draft of an ESD violence prevention curriculum tailored to TW (Aim 1); b) evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of recruitment, assessment procedures, retention and follow-up procedures, and implementation of the new intervention (Aim 2); and c) assess the preliminary efficacy of the tailored intervention program to increase use of self-protective resistance strategies, mitigate minority stressors and attitudinal barriers to self-defense, and reduce rates of exposure to violence (Exploratory Aim). The investigators will accomplish these aims using a two-phase research design that begins with formative qualitative work engaging research partners on a community board and a small sample of research participants. Information for Phase 1 can be located in Protocol number 2020-0017. Further refinement and assessment of the feasibility and acceptability of the curriculum using Phase 1 findings will occur in Phase 2 through the delivery of the tailored ESD curriculum to 3 groups of 16 TW. To assess the preliminary efficacy of the tailored intervention, program participants will complete a battery of validated questionnaires assessing use of resistance strategies, gender-minority and general psychological factors hypothesized to mediate the behavioral effects of the intervention, and exposure to victimization experiences prior to, immediately following, and 6 months post-completion of the training. Together, the proposed research will lay the foundation for a large-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the tailored ESD violence prevention curriculum.