Knife crime imagery and messaging: effective intervention tools or ineffective sensitisers? Experimental and eye-tracking findings

Knife images and messaging about knives are abundant in everyday media and are commonly used in anti-knife crime interventions. However, little is known about their impacts on young people’s perceptions and attitudes around knife crime. This three-part study, carried out by Sheffield Hallam University, in collaboration with the University of Sheffield, South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit and Thames Valley Violence Reduction Unit, used an experiment to test the impacts of knife imagery and messaging on 458 Year 10 pupils in South Yorkshire and Thames Valley using ratings of perceptions and attitudes to capture conscious responses. Part 2 used an Implicit Association Test on a subset of 156 pupils to assess implicit responses. Part 3 used the initial experiment and added an eye-tracking assessment of 13 young people.