School Personnel as Partners in the Prevention of Sex Trafficking: A Cross-Sectional Survey Study

School personnel play an important role in preventing violence and promoting positive school environments, yet little is known about their role in preventing sex trafficking of high school youth. As such, the purpose of this study was to answer the following: (1) How likely are school personnel to engage in prevention-related conversations with youth and report positive bystander intentions in situations of student sex trafficking? (2) How do demographics, sex trafficking knowledge, personal responsibility to help, perceptions of other school personnel's willingness to help, and cultural humility (i.e. self-reflection and learning to understand and respect cultural differences) relate to (a) bystander intentions and (b) engaging in prevention-related conversations? Participants were 143 school personnel in a Midwest urban school district. Participants, on average, agreed (on a 4-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree) that they engaged in prevention-related conversations with youth and reported having intentions to intervene as a bystander; thus, they were likely to engage in these behaviors. Results indicated that, on average, school personnel reported high levels of positive bystander intentions and were likely to engage in prevention-related conversations with youth regarding sex trafficking. Higher levels of personal beliefs regarding the unacceptability of sex trafficking and responsibility to prevent it and cultural humility were associated with greater bystander intentions. Greater knowledge related to commercial sexual exploitation was unexpectedly associated with lower bystander intentions. Overall, findings underscore the importance of multi-component approaches for school personnel that attend to social norms and cultural humility to support sex trafficking prevention efforts with high school youth.