How Research Evidence is Defined, Acquired, and Shared Across Systems That Address Intimate Partner Violence.

This exploratory study examined the flow of research evidence through systems that address intimate partner violence (IPV), including victim services, law enforcement, and criminal justice organizations. Qualitative interviews with representatives of these disciplines assessed how respondents define, acquire, and share research evidence. Findings suggest that research evidence is defined more broadly in the field than in academic settings, and is accessed primarily from trusted intermediaries within professional networks. State IPV coalitions and victim service providers are key intermediaries across sectors. Findings suggest the need for more tangible supports to support sharing of research information within and across service sectors.

Toward a multi-level, ecological approach to the primary prevention of sexual assault: prevention in peer and community contexts.

Although sexual assault prevention programs have been increasingly successful at improving knowledge about sexual violence and decreasing rape-supportive attitudes and beliefs among participants, reducing sexually assaultive conduct itself remains an elusive outcome. This review considers efforts to support change for individuals by creating prevention strategies that target peer network and community-level factors that support sexual violence. To this end, the article examines successful ecological prevention models from other prevention fields, identifies the components of multilevel prevention that appear critical to efficacy and discusses their application to existing and emerging sexual violence prevention strategies.

Predictors of sexually coercive behavior in a nationally representative sample of adolescent males.

Data from male participants in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health are used to examine childhood predictors of late adolescent and early adulthood sexually coercive behavior and adolescent mediators of these relationships. A path analysis shows that experiencing sexual abuse as a child has a direct effect on perpetrating subsequent coercion that is partially mediated by early sexual initiation. Involvement in delinquent activities in adolescence was the only additional significant predictor of sexually coercive behavior and completely mediated the relationship between physical abuse in childhood and later sexual coercion. Of note, more than half of men reporting sexually aggressive acts had no history of childhood victimization, so pathways to sexually coercive behavior for this group remain unidentified. In addition to the universal prevention approaches currently in use in the field, these findings suggest that targeted prevention programs need to be formulated for youth with histories of childhood sexual or physical abuse.

Jezebel at the welfare office: How racialized stereotypes of poor women's reproductive decisions and relationships shape policy implementation.

Current welfare scholarship lacks an analysis of how caseworkers discuss sexuality-related issues with clients. Seventy-two of 232 transcribed welfare interviews in three states included discussion of reproductive decisions and relationships. Overall, caseworkers' language reflected negative myths regarding African American women's sexuality and motherhood. By virtue of their status as welfare recipients, regardless of their individual races, clients were placed into racialized myths through workers' talk. This analysis demonstrates that though not present in every welfare interview and often veiled in bureaucratic language, negative ideas about poor women's sexuality persist in welfare policy and are deeply embedded in its day-to-day implementation.