Rising levels of gender-based violence (GBV), neo-sexist attitudes, and support for far-right ideologies among young people—documented in recent reports (Save the Children, 2024)—have intensified the urgency of effective interventions targeting men, masculinities, and early socialisation processes. Schools have increasingly become key sites for prevention, yet evidence on which types of school-based interventions work best, under which conditions, and through which mechanisms remains limited. Practitioners themselves hold divergent views on effective strategies (Morales, 2025), reflecting an unresolved debate between content-focused models and relational or participatory approaches. This paper provides the first comparative evaluation of different intervention models aimed at transforming masculinities and preventing GBV, neo-sexism, and attitudinal drift toward the far right among adolescents.
Empirically, the study combines a field evaluation of school-based programmes with a survey experiment designed to test the causal mechanisms underlying intervention effectiveness. The field component examines the impact of several interventions through pre- and post-intervention surveys administered across seven high schools in Spain (March–November 2025). These measures enable the assessment of shifts in attitudes, tolerance toward violence, and endorsement of sexist or exclusionary beliefs. To probe the mechanisms that drive intervention success, an online experiment conducted in January 2026 manipulates how masculinity interventions are framed—contrasting top-down (expert-led) versus bottom-up (peer-led) approaches, with a specific focus on the role of perceived agency.
The study advances the literature in two main ways. First, it distinguishes between internal attitudinal change (personal beliefs, tolerance of violence, and gendered attitudes) and external change in perceived social norms (what respondents believe peers and broader society find acceptable). This distinction allows us to determine whether interventions genuinely reshape internal dispositions or primarily shift perceptions of normative pressures. Second, the survey experiment tests whether the effectiveness of interventions varies depending on whether they are framed as top-down or bottom-up, investigating whether heightened agency increases receptivity and durability of change.
Together, these complementary approaches provide strong internal validity (through experimental identification of mechanisms) and external validity (through real-world implementation). The findings offer evidence-based guidance on which interventions are most promising, why they work, and how they can be effectively scaled within educational settings.
