Sara E. Crann, Ph.D., and Charlene Y. Senn, Ph.D. have been working together since 2018 at the University of Windsor (Canada) to help teen girls effectively resist sexual assault
They are co-principal Investigators on a $1M Public Health Agency of Canada grant to adapt and evaluate Dr. Senn’s Flip the Script with EAAATM sexual assault resistance program for teen girls.
As social psychologists, they are committed to the belief that high-quality theory and research evidence can be used not only to understand our world but also applied to make it better.
Women and adolescent girls’ health and wellbeing
This project began while Crann was a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Senn (2018-2020), and their collaboration continues. Crann is now an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Windsor.
Her research focuses on women and adolescent girls’ health and wellbeing, with a focus on sexual and intimate partner violence. She uses mixed-method and participatory research approaches to better understand girls’ and women’s gendered experiences, including interpersonal relationships and abuse.
She has over 20 peer-reviewed publications, and her research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Innovative studies on violence against women
Senn is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Windsor (Canada). For three decades, Senn has contributed innovative studies on violence against women. Her research questions and approach have been strongly influenced by her front-line experience at a shelter for assaulted women and engagement with other advocates and activists.
She has earned a national and international reputation with her excellence recognized with a Tier I Canada Research Chair (CRC; Canadian Institutes of Health Research) in Sexual Violence (2017-2024) and induction as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2023).
Senn developed the Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) sexual assault resistance education program (also known as Flip the Script with EAAATM) for women in the first year of university. In a Canadian Institutes of Health Research-funded randomized controlled trial (RCT), Flip the Script with EAAATM was shown to reduce the sexual violence women experience by 50% across the next two years while reducing woman-blaming and self-blame. To date, it has been implemented on campuses in six countries through the non-profit SARE Centre which she created to ensure that the Flip the Script with EAAATM program would be available to institutions and community organizations to use on a cost-recovery basis.
With her co-investigators, she has demonstrated the program’s effectiveness when implemented in the ‘real world’ outside of a rigorous RCT [accepted for publication in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology – forthcoming]. This is the critical next step in implementation science but one that is rarely undertaken.
Adapt and evaluate EAAA for other groups
Senn has active research collaborations in the U.S. and Canada to adapt and evaluate EAAA for other groups, e.g., for younger girls (14-17) in the community, for Francophone and trans college students. With co-PI Sarah Peitzmeier (University of Michigan), she is conducting a Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded RCT to test the efficacy of the adaptation of her program for online synchronous facilitation (IDEA3).
Her research findings have been used in key U.S and European government documents on sexual violence (e.g., Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality Report 2016, European Parliament). Senn’s research has helped re-frame empowerment self-defence approaches to sexual violence prevention for policy, research and practice, and funding organizations (particularly the Centers for Disease Control in the U.S.) which previously excluded “women’s programs” from systematic reviews of prevention and best practices, seeing them as woman-blaming. Her research has provided robust evidence to refute this view. She also contributes to sexual violence prevention and policy change through her consulting with universities and government committees and consulting and/or membership on taskforces in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.