​Project Update: Understanding and Combating Cyber-Sexual Violence
 
We are excited to share the latest developments in our research on non-consensual dissemination of intimate images (NCII), a form of cyber-sexual violence. Our project seeks to establish a validated measurement tool for NCII and identify shared risk and protective factors across online and in-person sexual violence.
 
Since our last update, a team of experts was collected to provide guidance and improvement for the scale, and we have officially started qualitative data collection with participants. We have also been invited to present at the international society for research on aggression. This summer, we will share our findings with a group of leading researchers and policy folks. This avenue will help us benefit from other scholars’ expertise and start disseminating our findings immediately.
 
Additionally, we attended the National Association of Student Personnel and Administrators conference (NASPA) in March. In an effort to promote our research and increase awareness about online sexual violence, we spoke to college administrators and education policy specialists about the influence of online violence on their campuses and what efforts are being made to support their students.
 
We look forward to continuing our efforts to making college campuses a safer place for all.
Thank you for your support in our mission to combat cyber-sexual violence.

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Since the last update we have finalized the structure of the Himpathy Scale by collaborating with Dr. Kate Manne, who first theorized the construct of himpathy, and we are now waiting for IRB approval of the study. Although we had hoped that by now we would have been collecting data, the IRB approval process has been slower than expected. We remain confident that data collection will occur rather quickly, given that we are using a very effective and validated online platform to do so.

To give a little more information about the scale, we have extrapolated three sub-constructs that make up the construct of himpathy and have developed items that attempt to capture those sub[1]constructs. We understand himpathy (excessive sympathy for certain perpetrators of sexual violence, mainly males perceived to be socially powerful) as including the following sub-constructs:

• Centering the perpetrator, which involves an unbalanced attention paid to the perpetrator that focuses on the preservation of the perpetrator’s wellbeing rather than the victim’s (an unconscious thought representing this might be “I want to make sure that the alleged perpetrator isn’t overly harmed by an accusation of sexual violence more than I want to address the victim’s needs”).
• Temporal sympathy, which involves thinking about the perpetrator before the victim.
• Loyalty to perpetrator/Willful ignorance, which involves a commitment (or tendency) to refuse the possibility that a certain perpetrator might have indeed committed sexual violence.

Once our study gets IRB approval, we’ll be able to test the reliability and validity of the scale.

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​Having collected so much data over the past several years, our team is in the writing and analyzing phase. In addition to our published paper on Resilience which was published and presented at the Society for Indian Psychologists annual conference last year, we have completed another report entitled, Sovereignty For Your Body: Acceptability of Sexual Victimization Risk Reduction Interventions Among Indigenous College Students.
 
We have two additional papers in various states of progress. One paper is focused on the type of mental health interventions Indigenous students prefer for trauma and substance use concerns. Generally, we are finding that people find peer-led interventions for these problems acceptable and few genders differences – this is great news for making interventions more available in low resource settings! The other paper is from our interview data with Indigenous people, providing sexual violence and mental health related interventions. Cassidy Armstrong will be using data from the project for her dissertation focused on research mistrust and Indigenous college students, so there will be even more papers to come!
  
We have even more big news! My research team is moving to the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Nursing and Health Sciences starting in August! We will be collecting data from 60-90 college women who are participating in either an Indigenized version of Flip the Script (Ashley and I’s study), a bisexual+ version of Flip the Script (one of my student’s dissertations), or the standard version on Oklahoma State’s campus starting this Fall!

Read more about our LMB Research Fellows!