SSW Research Seminar Series
Join us on Tuesday, November 17, 2-3 PM via Zoom
Dr. Amy Hammock, Assistant Professor, School of Welfare and Core Faculty Member, Program in Public Health, will be presenting:
At the nexus of advocacy and policy to address sexual assault: How campus personnel navigate (around) federal requirements
Increasingly, social workers at institutions of higher education (IHEs) work in various capacities to address campus sexual assault (CSA). CSA disproportionately affects women and LGBTQ students; both groups report victimization rates >20%. As federal Title IX requirements have evolved, IHEs have amended policies to be in better compliance. However, policy implementation may be incongruent with the public image of compliance, a process institutional theorists call “decoupling”. A mixed methods study was conducted with staff at IHEs to understand how they navigated Title IX compliance. Survey data found higher decoupling among public institutions and larger campuses; victim advocates reported higher rates of decoupling than did Title IX administrators. A subsample of 30 in-depth interviews found that, in general, they reported congruence between IHEs' public image and internal processes, although decoupling was more prevalent in specific CSA cases: (1) when CSA didn’t fit with some staff members’ opinions of “serious” CSA, despite inclusion of these behaviors in university policy (e.g., non-physical CSA, LGBTQ students’ victimization), and (2) when students accused of CSA hired attorneys to intervene in university processes. These findings suggest that CSA policy implementation may be unevenly executed at some IHEs, with certain populations experiencing more variability in response.
Join via Zoom: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/97978019989?pwd=OUgxeitKcXlhSFRvNWZkN09USXZjZz09
Meeting ID: 979 7801 9989
Passcode: 115670
For more information, email: Michelle.Ballan@stonybrook.edu
