Engaging the Community: Building Effective Partnerships in Sexual Violence Prevention

Abstract

Sexual violence is a multifaceted problem with individual, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural dimensions. Researchers have increasingly turned to social institutions, such as nonprofit agencies, in their efforts to understand and ultimately prevent aggression and victimization. Drawing on interviews with 30 scientists and other scholars, this study explored sexual violence researchers’ experiences with and approaches to collaborating with local communities and institutions. Participants shared diverse experiences working with institutionalized and noninstitutionalized local communities, antiviolence advocates and social workers, medical providers, police, attorneys, employees of bars and restaurants, educators, and university administrators. Many noted that the commitments that motivate researchers may be insufficient for engaging community partners. The aim of ending violence, in itself, may not be enough. Narratives of trauma, of risk and safety, may not be enough. Concerns about limited resources and potential backlash or liability may dissuade community members and institutions from partnering with researchers in prevention. Distrust may also pose a barrier. Fortunately, researchers have developed promising strategies for engaging institutional partners despite these concerns. These include cultivating mutual partnerships, in which researchers prioritize institutional input and commit to giving back to their partners and surrounding communities; combining awareness and prevention, in which efforts to raise awareness through institutions are coupled with the development of concrete action plans; and reframing the problem, in which sexual violence or its outcomes are connected with established institutional priorities.

Keywords

Community-based research sexual violence courts education nonprofits police

In January 2014, The White House Council on Women and Girls published a report demanding greater attention to sexual violence (White House Council on Women and Girls 2014). While council members depicted sexual violence as a national problem, they emphasized college campuses as a key site for intervention based on quantitative data from the Campus Sexual Assault Study (Krebs et al. 2007; see Muehlenhard et al. 2017 for a review of the one-in-five figure), in which 19 percent of women reported experiencing sexual assault during their college years. Then-President Obama responded by forming a task force to identify best practices for preventing and responding to sexual violence on campus, and to ensure that colleges were complying with existing federal policy. This was not the first time that college students had been identified as a priority population. Nearly 30 years earlier, Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski (1987) found that one in four college women reported having experienced attempted or completed rape in their lifetimes, whereas approximately one in 12 college men reported having committed attempted or completed rape. More recently, the renewed Violence against Women Act (VAWA) had established a Campus Program requiring grantees to provide prevention education for all incoming students, and to demonstrate collaboration with on- and off-campus partners in violence prevention. Native Americans in reservation communities, undocumented immigrants, and members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations were also identified as priority groups for intervention and support.

Few have disputed the need to address sexual violence on college campuses and in socially marginalized communities. Perhaps fewer have disputed either the Council or Obama’s reliance on statistical data to promote changes in antiviolence policy. Indeed, it is common for scientific research to influence state and other institutional priorities. Since the emergence of large-scale antirape activism in the 1970s, scientists and other scholars have collaborated with community activists, practitioners, and fellow scholars in raising awareness of rape and promoting reforms in law and social policy (Corrigan 2013; Martin 2005; Mulla 2014; Spohn and Horney 1992; Whittier 2009). Furthermore, scientists play unique and important roles in producing knowledge about rape (Rutherford 2017). They are tasked with determining the incidence and prevalence of rape (Breiding et al. 2014; Muehlenhard et al. 2017; Tjaden and Thoennes 2000), identifying factors that promote or deter individual risk or communal rates of perpetration and victimization (Abbey 2011; Armstrong, Hamilton, and Sweeney 2006; Gervais, DiLillo, and McChargue 2014; Hines et al. 2012), and evaluating prevention and response efforts (Alderden and Ullman 2012; Coker et al. 2011; McMahon 2014; Morrison et al. 2004). Service providers and state officials may request, challenge, or draw from scientific research to improve on their own efforts to address rape.

While scholars of rape have provided rich accounts of feminist antirape activism, legal reforms, and social and medical services (Bevacqua 2000; Corrigan 2013; Martin 2005; Mulla 2014; Spohn and Horney 1992), as well as the capacity of sexual violence to maintain power relations (Collins 2004), there have been minimal investigations of scientific work (see Rutherford 2017 for an exception). Researchers have devoted considerable attention to popular and institutional support for rape myths (Edwards et al. 2011; Ryan 2011), and approaches to sexual communication and the interpretation of sexual consent and refusal (Muehlenhard 2011; Muehlenhard et al. 2016), without exploring their (our) own potential role in shaping such matters. Yet scientists can and do have influence. Decisions regarding study design, recruitment, and theoretical foundations guide the production of knowledge. Published works may affect popular and institutional approaches to rape and consent (Rutherford 2017). Ongoing reliance on statistics in the United States policy arena ensures ongoing influence for scientists who produce and interpret statistics (Jasanoff 2005; Porter 1995). Ultimately, if the construction of scientific knowledge matters for social policy, as well as popular understandings of rape, it is necessary to investigate the social processes happening within science. It is further important to consider relationships between science and such external influences as social movements, community institutions, and members of “target” populations.

The processes of incorporating scientific knowledge into concrete and feasible strategies for social change are complex and challenging. Researchers who wish to impact prevention and response efforts beyond the academy must work to build relationships with diverse professionals, while navigating career pressures within academia or professional research. In some instances, the commitments that motivate researchers may be insufficient for engaging institutions. The aim of ending violence, in itself, may not be enough. Narratives of trauma, of risk and safety, may not be enough. Concerns about limited resources and potential backlash or liability may dissuade institutions from partnering with researchers in prevention. Distrust between researchers and institutional actors may also pose a barrier. Many of these concerns relate to the broader challenges of doing public sociology (Burawoy 2005). Public sociology prioritizes “reaching a public audience and serving to improve the public’s well-being” (Brady 2004:1629). These aims, however laudable, are practically and professionally challenging. It can be difficult to tangibly measure the impact of community-engaged work, which poses problems for evaluation and any effort to secure funding. Academic culture often devalues public sociology in favor of “pure” scholarship. Many universities push faculty to write for academic audiences and pursue publications in top-tier journals. These institutions implicitly or explicitly discourage writing for public audiences or sharing work in less prestigious outlets such as community newsletters or agency websites. Such devaluation is even more pronounced for feminist scholarship and other work with readily evident political ties; this is particularly concerning for sexual violence researchers whose work is motivated by feminist and other antioppression ideals, or who might hope to partner with activists and community groups (Sprague and Laube 2009).

This paper explores scientists’ and other scholars’ efforts to engage community partners in sexual violence prevention and response. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 30 researchers, I present an overview of challenges with building and maintaining relationships, and three promising strategies for effective collaborations: cultivating mutual partnerships, in which researchers prioritize others’ input and commit to giving back to their partners and surrounding communities; combining awareness and prevention, in which efforts to raise awareness through institutions are coupled with the development of concrete action plans; and reframing the problem, in which sexual violence or its outcomes are connected with established institutional priorities.

Method

This study emerged from a larger project on scientific approaches to sexual violence in the United States and Canada from 1975 to the present, with the following primary research questions:

Research Question 1: How have scientists conceptualized sexual violence among adults?

Research Question 2: What social mechanisms enable, constrain, and otherwise influence scientific research in this field?

That project began with a comprehensive review of scientific journal publications, and in-depth assessments of smaller samples of studies in the subfields of incidence/prevalence research, causal studies seeking to identify factors that promote and deter sexual violence, and studies exploring the impacts or aftermath.

To identify relevant studies for content analysis, I consulted the Social Sciences Citation Index within the Web of Science database. I searched for publications with any of the following terms in their titles: rape, sexual assault, sexual violence, rapist. All searches were completed between February and April of 2016. To ensure feasibility and gain a sense of knowledges that had acquired some traction in scientific communities, I restricted the search to works that had received at least 10 citations among those published from 1975 to 2009 and at least five citations among those published from 2010 to 2015 (see Waidzunas and Epstein 2015). This yielded an initial pool of 1,855 records, including 1,511 and 314 from these respective time periods. All records were screened for study relevance. For the larger project, I sought empirical studies and reviews of empirical studies that focused on rape among adults, within the United States and/or Canada. Works that did not meet these criteria—theoretical literature, historical overviews, and policy papers that did not provide, critique, or otherwise review empirical data; studies focused exclusively on sexual violence involving children; works focused exclusively on sexual violence outside of these nations; and those for which I was unable to locate abstracts—were excluded. The final pool contained 1,313 records, including 1,107 from 1975 to 2009 and 206 from 2010 to 2015.

To gain a sense of scientists’ conceptualizations of sexual violence over time, I coded all records along the following dimensions: lead author, title, year, academic citations, methods (qualitative, quantitative), study aims (causes of sexual violence, effects, quantification, policy/program evaluation, assessing theoretical and/or methodological approaches), area of focus (victims or victimization, perpetrators or perpetration, professionals in violence prevention and response, bystanders and/or the general public), gender dynamics (women as victims, women as perpetrators, men as victims, men as perpetrators, transgender inclusivity), and target population (general or community populations, colleges and universities, military, care facilities such as hospitals and crisis centers, current or former prison inmates, other actors involved in criminal justice proceedings such as police and attorneys, demographic populations such as African American women or queer individuals). Most of this information was collected through a review of abstracts, though full texts were consulted regularly as needed to complete content analysis of each study. When pieces were difficult to classify along these criteria, I supplemented coding with qualitative notes. Categories were not mutually exclusive. For example, a study that explored both the prevalence of rape and risk factors for victimization would have been classified as addressing both quantification and causes.

The initial interview recruitment list was developed after content analyses. Participants were contacted through cold-calling and emailing. On completing interviews, I asked participants for referrals for individuals (including, but not necessarily limited to, other scientists) who had influenced, collaborated with, or otherwise affected their research on sexual violence. Finally, I engaged in networking at meetings for professional associations in various disciplines to identify potential participants. This was particularly helpful for identifying “younger” scholars who had not yet published or received many citations, and scholars whose publications on sexual violence were missed in my initial Web of Science search.

Whereas the first stage of this project had been more systematic, seeking broad understandings of the scientific field and dominant trends and perspectives, I strove for variation in perspective and background throughout interview recruitment. I reached out to widely cited scholars whose work had demonstrably influenced the field, and to scholars who focused on relatively marginal or neglected aspects of this work (e.g., sexual violence within intimate partnerships). I reached out to established researchers, early career scholars, and graduate students. I sought out scholars who were trained in different disciplines, employed different methodologies, and who worked in different fields within and outside of academia. Across all of these approaches, I contacted 82 scholars. Forty-eight (59 percent) responded, including 42 (51 percent) who expressed interest in completing an interview. I was able to schedule and conduct interviews with 30 of these scholars (37 percent of the initial recruitment list, 71 percent of those who expressed interest). All recruitment and interviews took place between October 2016 and September 2017.

Interviews were semistructured (see appendix for the interview guide). They began with broad questions about participants’ work (e.g., what let you to study sexual violence?), which were often sufficient to generate rich discussions on a range of subjects including priorities for the field, collaboration and conflict among scholars, varying methodological approaches, and strategies for building and maintaining relationships with community partners. Interviews ranged in length from approximately half an hour (this occurred when researchers had severe time constraints, but still wanted to participate) to two hours; most conversations were between 50 and 70 minutes.

All participants provided oral consent to participate and, provided that they were comfortable with this, for me to audio record our conversations. I transcribed all recordings, and removed identifying information as thoroughly as I could to safeguard anonymity. I also encouraged participants to assist me in recognizing aspects of their work and experiences that might be difficult to write about without revealing their identities, and further to let me know of any content they wished me to omit from transcripts or subsequent writings for any reason. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Temple University.

Throughout the processes of recruiting, interviewing, and transcribing, I wrote memos to reflect on emergent patterns/themes and interpersonal dynamics across interviews (Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw 2011). I developed and refined a coding scheme based on my primary research questions, previous strategies for analyzing abstracts and full texts, and concepts that seemed more specific to these qualitative data. The final coding scheme included six distinct families with a total of 51 codes. The most relevant families for this study included “Engaging the Community” (practitioners, alcohol-serving establishments, building relationships, clinics/hospitals, combining awareness and prevention, community involvement, competing priorities, corporations, courts/attorneys, cultivating mutual partnerships, K–12 schools, news media, police, prisons/corrections, reframing the problem, state institutions, trust/distrust, universities); “Challenges among Scientists” (career expectations, grants, in-group conflict, out-group conflict, impact of conflict); and “Identity and Intersectionality” (age, class, disability, gender, intersectionality, race/ethnicity, religion, sexuality). All transcripts were analyzed in Atlas.ti.

Results

The 30 researchers who took part in this study offered a wealth of experience with community partnerships. Across their careers, these scholars had collaborated with diverse community members including individuals in well-resourced localities, individuals in more socially and economically marginalized areas such as low-income rural communities and reservation-based Native American communities, and institutionalized populations such as prison inmates. Participants had also collaborated with numerous institutional partners such as practitioners, including community-based advocates, social workers, and medical professionals; criminal justice professionals, including prison staff, police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys; education professionals, including administrators, student services providers, and teachers at the college/university and high school levels; and service industry professionals including the owners and employees of alcohol-serving establishments. In the following sections, I provide overviews of challenges in building and sustaining researcher-community partnership, along with strategies that have been effective in previous research and seem adaptable to further endeavors.

To preserve anonymity, I use pseudonyms to refer to all participants. As discussed above, I have also attempted to remove all identifying information from excerpts and my own descriptions of participants’ perspectives and backgrounds, and to omit content concerning projects and collaborations so distinct that any mention might risk confidentiality.

Challenges in Building and Sustaining Community Partnerships

Although many participants had developed long-lasting and valuable relationships with community partners, many had faced challenges in doing so. I have organized these loosely into three categories: building trust with individuals and institutions who are reluctant to work with researchers, competing priorities that arise when the motivations or ultimate goals of those studying sexual violence conflict with those of community partners, and resource constraints that impede the often time-consuming and otherwise costly work of building sustainable relationships.

Building trust

When you come in from the outside, you look like a person of privilege and you’re looking at them as a wretch, and they’re going to be some wretch in some experiment and they don’t want to do that . . . researchers have such a bad reputation inside prison because we take, and we don’t give. (Karen, criminal justice scholar)

I think there was some sense that I was a woman, and that I probably had an axe to grind, and wanted to confirm my own prejudices about the way that the criminal justice system handles sexual assault . . . one has to be careful to present the project as a quest for knowledge. And for pushing back the boundaries of what we know about the response of the criminal justice system to this crime. And not with a preconceived notion that nothing has changed, and that we know that the response of the criminal justice system to sexual assault is awful and want to collect data to prove that. (Tanya, criminologist)

Community members and professionals outside of academia are sometimes wary of partnering with researchers. Several participants spoke about a concerning history of scholars across multiple disciplines exploiting vulnerable communities. Stephanie, a psychologist, criticized “helicopter research” approaches in which “you zoom in, you collect your data, and you leave.” She went on to explain that “when you do that, you’re really exploiting the community. And they catch on very quickly, so the mistrust among these marginalized communities for mainstream folks is real and palpable. And you have to work to overcome it.” This issue might arise through any number of power/privilege disparities between researchers and community partners. Stephanie, herself, was a White woman and professor who had been involved in antiviolence projects geared toward low-income communities of color. As an intersectional feminist, she noted that race and class dynamics in these projects were further connected with sexuality, gender identity, disability, citizenship status, and other dimensions of identity and social inequality, and that all such matters were relevant to the work of building trust and conducting ethical research. Karen, quoted above, commented that incarcerated people have been repeatedly mistreated by scholars seeking to advance their own careers without paying much mind to the concerns and experiences of inmates.

These same issues might also pose barriers to collaborating with practitioners. Lisa, a sociologist with a rich history of institutional collaboration, recalled having once been told that “we don’t have time for research. We’ve got work to do.” While she was able to build numerous productive relationships with advocates, she also expressed sympathy for some providers’ reluctance to take part in academic studies that might not necessarily benefit them or the communities they serve.

Some barriers to trust concerned researchers’ actual or perceived values. Criminal justice institutions, such as police departments and district attorneys’ offices, were often suspicious of researchers’ motives. Tanya, quoted above, had faced skepticism as a woman studying police and prosecutorial responses to violence against women. Diana, a public health scholar, noted the importance of conveying that she and her colleagues were seeking “to improve things, not to catch them doing bad things.” Pam, a criminologist, commented that police and prosecutors were sometimes reluctant to partner with researchers with connections to activist groups that were perceived as hostile to law enforcement. Scholars who publicly aligned with feminist activism or ideals frequently faced considerable scrutiny. Gretchen, a psychologist whose work often involved partnerships with high schools, shared the following:

I have had parents bring up my affiliation with women’s studies . . . I think they want to know, “what are you teaching my kids? And are you teaching them from this kind of feminist perspective?” . . . We do get parents occasionally, particularly dads I guess, who worry, “is this going to be about how all men are bad?” again, that’s not that common, but I would say, for every study we do in a school that we do, I get one or two dads that call. And that’s a fair question. Because I think, historically, violence prevention has really been very much about men’s use of violence against women. And while that’s important, there’s so many other ways in which violence happens.

To address these concerns, Gretchen often emphasized the scientific basis of antiviolence interventions in schools, and the priority of improving the safety and well-being of all students.

Finally, some participants expressed concerns about being worthy of trust, even if they had not developed community partnerships or faced opposition. Alisa, a public health scholar, worried that her own identity as a heterosexual nontransgender woman limited her capacity to study victimization among sexual and gender minorities: “I don’t want to speak on behalf of people. I can’t make assumptions—I mean I can make assumptions about why [sexual violence in these communities] is happening, but I don’t have personal experience.” She elaborated that community input would be essential for translating research into substantive, specific implications.

Competing priorities

It just doesn’t work to try to convince bars to do this out of the kindness of their heart because “rape is bad.” I mean, it just doesn’t work . . . they’re kind of like, “that’s not our problem . . . people come in here for a sexualized environment. They come here dressed a certain way.” They’re still dealing with those rape myths, so you can’t come in with that attitude. (Rebecca, public health scholar)

I feel extremely fortunate because [university] has been on board from the beginning with doing campus climate surveys . . . But I’ve heard many times from others, “my administration is not interested in doing this” or “my administration is interested in doing this, but I don’t think they’re going to do anything with the findings.” . . . And I do think the issue of transparency is one that’s tough, and I can understand that colleges and universities have some fears or some hesitancy, the nervousness that comes with “what, we’re going to publish statistics about how many students are raped at our institution?” and that certainly needs to be acknowledged and then put in context. (Julia, social work scholar)

Many scholars are drawn to this field by their desire to end sexual violence. Max, a criminologist with considerable academic and professional experience in the area, felt that “the nature of the research is such that you just can’t help but want to help.” In her experience, researchers with and without backgrounds in activism seemed to become antiviolence advocates through the work of studying rape. However, such commitments are not consistently shared by community partners. Rebecca, quoted above, noted that one barrier to working with alcohol-serving establishments was that many bar owners and staff thought of sexual violence as someone else’s problem. More concerning was her observation that some individuals actively reinforced rape myths, such as “women who go to bars are ‘asking for it,’” in expressing reluctance to intervene. Discussing her efforts to collaborate with university officials, Audrey, a public health scholar, shared that “as much as I want them to just care about violence because violence is bad and they should want to, I also know the reality is there are lots of bad things that happen on college campuses, and they need to understand why this one in particular needs to be on their agenda.” Once again, the problem of sexual violence was insufficient to secure buy-in.

Even institutional investment might not guarantee engagement. Many scholars who worked on campus sexual assault expressed frustration at universities’ competing interests in safeguarding students’ well-being, on one hand, and maintaining a good reputation, on the other. These concerns were quite pronounced regarding prevalence estimates. For example, participants argued that Campus Climate Surveys produce more accurate data than campus police records; however, those “better” estimates are consistently also much higher. Audrey spoke to a need for researchers to educate administrators about the fact that higher prevalence estimates might indicate better data. She also encouraged researchers to consider administrators’ perspectives: “Suddenly you have a hundred rapes reported on campus last year, but every other college in your state reporting one or two . . . we need to think about [what] college administrators think about in terms of recruitment, having donors contribute money to the school.” Rebecca echoed these concerns, commenting that “every institution is afraid of being labeled as ‘the rape institution.’”

Still another challenge concerned disagreements among external partners. This issue was particularly pronounced for scholars whose work addressed multiple forms of sexual violence. Brenda, a sociologist, insisted that “you don’t compartmentalize women’s experiences . . . you talk about it all.” Yet her experiences working with sexual assault and domestic violence advocates were fraught with compartmentalization. For example, among advocates who specialized in domestic violence,

[Sexual violence] just feels different somehow. More invasive, more private. Even as some of these advocates I interviewed would talk about the language. Like you know, not comfortable saying the word “penis.” So I’m thinking, “you can help a battered woman who’s had her face just massacred, but you don’t feel comfortable with the word penis?” it’s kind of mind blowing . . . I think it’s just so individualized. Some [domestic violence and sexual assault] programs are coming together and realizing this is a great collaboration, we should be doing both. And others, because they’ve competed for the same funding pot for so many years, that it’s more acrimonious.

Stephanie expressed similar concerns about collaboration across agencies, and further echoed Brenda’s point that such compartmentalization did not reflect victims’/survivors’ lived experiences:

[Services are] completely segregated all the time . . . Women who are victims of domestic violence are often sexually assaulted within the context of that relationship, and yet a lot of the domestic violence people are not really trained to deal with sexual assault. Sexual assault, sometimes, occurs in the context of dating relationships. Often times, people who are victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, were victims of childhood abuse. So from a victim perspective, it’s messy and complicated. But from a service provision side, it’s a lot more siloed.

Stephanie likened segregation in advocacy to some academics’ tendency to forego interdisciplinary collaboration, and therefore to limit their capacity to understand individual and social phenomena.

Resource constraints

There’s so much pressure on faculty members to get grants and publish, that to become immersed in the community and do community-based work is difficult, because it’s very time consuming . . . I worked on one project back in [city], kind of a women’s empowerment project, and we wanted to—it was a low income community, a community of color. So here we were, two White women doing this. So that was our number one challenge. We were definitely outsiders . . . and we probably spent a year going to the community, having pizza with them, doing little programs. I mean we would do small programs on domestic violence and sexual assault, and just talking. It might only have been three or four women we would go and meet with for a couple of hours. Well you know, you don’t put that on your vita. That doesn’t “count” in academia at all. (Stephanie, psychologist)

Building relationships with bars is really challenging, because our program is multisession . . . and we require them to train [a substantial majority] of their staff who have face-to-face contact with patrons regularly as part of their job duties . . . we get bar owners who say “I think this sounds cool, I want to do it, but I just don’t know logistically when or how I’m going to get all my staff together for this.” And they’re worried that bar staff are not going to want to do it, because it takes time out of their personal life. They want to be paid for it, and managers don’t necessarily want to pay them for it. So they’re worried from like a logistical side. (Rebecca, public health scholar)

Much like the communities and institutions with which they partner, researchers face ongoing resource constraints. Yet it can take tremendous time and effort to create partnerships. Researchers must confront the trust issues and competing priorities noted above, and do the more human work of building interpersonal relationships with individuals in various domains. Those who wish to avoid “helicopter research” approaches must also think about how to develop mutually beneficial partnerships, some of which will continue well beyond the end of a project. Karen took this concern quite seriously for her work with incarcerated people, to the point of deciding that “I always stay. My study ended [years ago], and I’m still there.” Julia recalled doing substantial ground work before being able to begin a project with student athletes. She had to meet with and secure approval from the university athletic director; reach out to various teams to establish individual relationships, utilizing each successful contact for further networking; and finally help out at team events, sometimes including such mundane tasks as passing out beverages.

Unfortunately, many participants noted that community involvement is not often rewarded in academia. Stephanie, quoted above, had faced considerable pressure to publish quickly and avoid intensive community work. Denise, whose background was also in psychology but with more of a community focus, echoed these concerns:

Just as there are realities to practitioner life, there are realities to academic life. I’m, again, fortunate to be in a discipline that understands that a large part of that discipline is applied, and so therefore I get cut slack for doing projects that are more focused on practice. I don’t think everyone always does. If we’re getting kudos or getting tenure for doing the best, biggest statistical models of x, y, and z, doing that takes a lot of energy, and that energy takes away from what may need to start as—like a lot of my projects with practitioners started with very small qualitative pilot things that were useful to their work but were not necessarily going to immediately turn into a publication. And those relationships take time to build. And you don’t always have a lot of time on the way to your tenure clock being expired, right? So I think that stuff can get in the way.

These challenges were so substantial that some participants waited until tenure before considering applied projects. Others decided that non-tenure-track and nonacademic positions were preferable if they wished to be able to devote sufficient time and resources to community-based work.

Resource constraints among community partners can pose additional challenges. This was an ongoing concern for scholars in program development and evaluation. Gretchen noted that “almost all the programming that I’m evaluating, there’s some cost associated.” Although she was generally able to provide interventions free of charge to participant high schools, this was by no means guaranteed in the larger world of prevention/intervention research. Rebecca, quoted above, described related obstacles working with alcohol-serving establishments. Although she and her colleagues were able to provide free bystander intervention trainings, they were unable to compensate trainees for their time. Some bar owners offered compensation for staff who attended, but others were unwilling or unable to do so. This resulted in reduced participation and sometimes resentment from trainees who felt compelled to work without pay.

Promising Strategies

Although many participants had faced obstacles in building and sustaining community partnerships, many had also found promising strategies for doing such work. Three that stood out as particularly effective and widely embraced were cultivating mutual partnerships, in which researchers demonstrably valued partners’ involvement and further ensured that all parties involved benefited from projects where possible; combining awareness and prevention, in which researchers collaborated to develop action plans for responding to data that might otherwise seem overwhelming or even threatening to an institution; and reframing the problem, which involved connecting sexual violence prevention and response to other established priorities. These three strategies are not intended to “line up” with the three challenges described earlier. All of these may apply to all of those challenges, and none are sufficient to overcome all obstacles in collaboration.

Cultivating mutual partnerships

If you just say “we want to survey your kids,” they’re like, “not another survey.” But we’re offering them evidence-based prevention and a partnership, where they see some benefit to them. And I think it was helping schools to see that the surveys were going to be useful to them, not just to us . . . in addition to getting prevention programming. Even if they’re a control school, they always get the programming at the end if it’s deemed effective. And they get it free of charge, too. (Gretchen, psychologist)

When you do good work, and when you’re thoughtful, and when you allow them to see the work and have input—at least reflective input—I think they’re much more willing to open themselves up to additional research. This is a very sensitive topic . . . you have such low clearance numbers, and you have such low prosecution and conviction numbers. So I think just having a good relationship with them is so important. (Pam, criminologist)

By far, the most common strategy involved cultivating mutual partnerships with community members and institutions. This approach was multifaceted. At its most basic, mutuality ensured that all parties involved benefitted in some way—sometimes within the same project, and other times in a more long-term sense. Gretchen, quoted above, offered a range of incentives for schools that participated in evaluation research including free access to prevention programming, stipends, and nontechnical reports with overviews of current strengths and areas for improvement. She also worked to balance individual schools’ needs with best practices in evaluation research. For example, she might use random sampling as a standard approach but be willing to compromise on this if a particular school “really needs to be in the treatment condition.”

Advocacy and criminal justice organizations often desire assistance to evaluate their work and identify priorities for further endeavors. Several participants were able to cultivate mutual partnerships by lending their skills in study design and data analysis. Pam, quoted above, commented that police and prosecutors “sometimes, in order to access one kind of dataset, maybe you’re providing them some kind of research support in some other avenue.” In describing her collaborations with local institutions, Audrey shared that,

I would meet with [staff] to say “here is our plan, and is the data—as long as we’re doing this, is there data that would be helpful for you to have?” . . . And I think that is where we worked with them pretty collaboratively, at least our university, in the beginning to set up that first study design. It’s one of those—it doesn’t yield anything for me in terms of publications. We’ve just assisted them with their pre-/post-training surveys, and providing some resources for data entry, data analysis. Because we have that skill set here. And it’s sort of in the interest of being a good citizen.

Max described a similar situation in which she had offered to provide data analysis and interpretation for an antiviolence coalition. In turn, they distributed a survey for her independent research alongside their (already scheduled) assessment of member agencies’ needs and services.

Different forms of knowledge vary in credibility and impact (Epstein 1996; Murphy 2006). Whereas individual narratives of trauma and recovery can be tremendously powerful, they may lack the institutional and policy impact of statistical data and larger scale qualitative inquiry (Jasanoff 2005). Wendy, a social work scholar, recalled that it was easier to secure university resources for campus prevention when she provided detailed quantitative evaluations: “Administrators said to me, ‘we can’t do with stories what we can do with data.’ You know? The higher ups, they need to allocate more money [based on data].” Max recalled collaborating with service providers who had encountered high rates of interpersonal violence in rural communities but were only able to secure funding to address this concern after she provided a statistical report confirming their observations.

Another aspect of mutuality concerned valuing community partners’ expertise. Several participants had involved partners directly in the research process. This might entail collaborating on initial study design (as described by Audrey) and/or seeking reflective input on data interpretation and presentation (as described by Pam). Denise commented that her clinical background was immensely valuable for research, and that “having genuine respect for where that practice comes from, and the value of practice-based knowledge, has been helpful . . . it’s really important to recognize that we all have expertise to bring to the table.” She elaborated that, just as researchers can offer valuable insights for improving services in different domains, so too can practitioners offer valuable insights for researchers:

I’ve also been really fortunate to have great practitioner collaborators who are willing to engage in honest conversations . . . you have to have that moment where they say “that’s a great bunch of statistics, but we already knew that. Why do you keep researching questions that we already have the answers to? We need the answers to these questions.” You know? But at the same time, support one another in the work. So I think I’ve been really fortunate to have people who are very willing to have those kinds of honest, challenging conversations.

Numerous participants shared Denise’s belief that engaging multiple perspectives enriched scientific projects. The challenges of competing priorities, building trust, and resource constraints persisted, but many researchers had managed to build and sustain mutual relationships. In Gretchen’s words, “if you have a strong enough team, you work through it.”

Combining awareness and prevention

A lot of the research on sexual assault . . . depending on the agency, they might see it as not putting them in the greatest light. And it’s so important then to be able to sit with them and talk to them about, ok, while it may say this, it’s also an opportunity. Let’s talk about what opportunities exist to make it better for victims, to make it better for the agency. So even though the outcomes might be kind of negative, let’s take that negative and let’s turn it into something that’s an action step that shows you in a positive light. (Pam, criminologist)

Our recommendation has been that colleges and universities consider releasing their findings along with an action plan, so that they can say, “yes, this is a problem we have. We have it on our campus, just like any other campus. And here’s what we’re going to do about it.” Because if you have that response, it shows you’re not just ignoring the problem. (Julia, social work scholar)

Translating empirical research into social action can be challenging. In the case of sexual violence work, community partners might lack the skills or resources to do so. As described in the section on competing priorities, institutions might also be wary of research that seems unfavorable. Researchers in criminology often described hesitance among police and prosecutors to collaborate for these reasons. Pam, quoted above, had developed strategies for portraying ostensibly negative outcomes as opportunities to improve organizational practices and publicly demonstrate a commitment to supporting victims. Tanya described a project in which collaborators made this connection themselves: “They said, ‘you uncovered some things that we need to work on, that we need to do better.’ The [police department] established a specialized training program for their sexual assault detectives. The sheriff’s department instituted some of the changes that we recommended.”

Campus prevention specialists often struggled with administrators who feared publishing high prevalence estimates. Moreover, university administrators rarely had the necessary skills to design effective interventions. In calling for broader investment in conducting and publishing the results of Campus Climate Surveys, Julia (quoted earlier) and several others suggested that such data be released alongside concrete action plans. This further highlighted the promise of researcher-practitioner collaborations, as practitioners often have valuable skills for developing and implementing comprehensive prevention and response measures.

Reframing the problem

It’s really, I think, the educational disruption. For the university, then that means their graduation rate is going down. That’s an outcome they can really rally behind. And there’s all this work happening, and so we can say [sexual violence] is leading to this consequence in education retention that you really care about. (Audrey, public health scholar)

Is the incidence of sexual violence lower in bars that have trained bar staff? But then also, from an economic point of view, do you have more people coming to your bar? Do they feel safer? Are they more inclined to go to your alcohol-serving establishment? Because that would help us build buy-in on behalf of the bar owners and managers. (Marion, public health scholar)

When prospective partners were not invested in addressing sexual violence, or found the issue important but irrelevant to their work, researchers were sometimes able to link antiviolence projects with other established priorities. Audrey (quoted earlier) often tailored her approach to the concerns of specific community partners. When working to address sexual violence on campus, she connected sexual victimization with educational outcomes. This, in combination with the more typical approaches of highlighting personal narratives, prevalence data, and mental and medical health outcomes made for a powerful argument. When working with hospital and clinic staff, Audrey pointed out that many patients came to appointments with their partners. She advocated that providers spend several minutes alone with each patient to screen for interpersonal violence, and to offer support to victims/survivors as appropriate. Collaborators were somewhat hesitant until she connected this practice with another dimension of clinical work:

The other thing that comes up a lot, and this is probably where there was more buy-in, was the realm of substance abuse. We have a lot of women who are using substances that their partners may or may not know [about]. And so they actually can use that five minutes to talk about what’s likely to show up on their drug screen . . . it’s not just violence, actually. There’s other things that you really shouldn’t have people in the room [for]. And I think that has helped to make it a little more acceptable.

This strategy ensured better services for patients in abusive situations and improved clinicians’ capacity to support patients struggling with substance use and other potentially sensitive matters.

Profit motives seemed particularly promising for researchers who collaborated with corporate partners, such as alcohol-serving establishments. Marion, quoted above, spoke to the potential for bystander intervention training to improve patron safety and comfort. With adequate publicity, participating in such trainings might have financial benefits for owners and staff in addition to reducing sexual harassment and other forms of violence. Rebecca shared similar views. She also suggested that sexual violence prevention might constitute a legal compliance issue:

In our state, we have a statute that basically says that bars can be held liable for patron acts of violence that take place on or around the alcohol-serving establishment property . . . and if you look at the definition of violence in our state statutes, it’s pretty open ended. Sexual assault could apply to it. So we’ve tied it in that way, and the bar owners’ ears perk up immediately when you tie it into their legal liability. They may not care about preventing sexual assault because they think it’s important in their bar environment, or actually happens there. They care about it when it comes to their liquor license.

Notably, such reframing had no substantive impact on the content of antiviolence interventions. It was simply the justification for programming that shifted.

Discussion

Community partnerships are central to the work of addressing sexual violence. Scientists and other scholars who seek to affect social change have much to gain from building relationships with advocates, criminal justice professionals, educators and school administrators, medical providers, and community members. Participants in this study revealed numerous challenges to such work. Many prospective partners are distrustful of academics, and sometimes with good reason. Socially marginalized communities such as racial/ethnic minorities, reservation-based communities, sexual and gender minorities, low-income and poor individuals and families, undocumented immigrants, and people with disabilities may be particularly wary due to historical and ongoing exploitation by researchers (Lareau 2011; Ordover 2003). Some institutions, such as police and prosecutors, may fear that researchers’ agendas run counter to their own. Competing priorities between researchers and community partners, and between partners in different domains, can impede research as well as prevention and response efforts (Corrigan 2013; Mulla 2014; Whittier 2009). Time and other resource constraints can make the work of building and sustaining partnerships impractical or even counterproductive for scholars in tenure-track positions and practitioners with substantial caseloads.

Fortunately, participants in this study offered several promising strategies for overcoming obstacles to collaboration. Many highlighted the importance of cultivating mutual partnerships. Ensuring that all parties benefit in some way, offering reflective or other input on study design and data interpretation, and recognizing diverse expertise can go a long way. Institutions that fear liability or loss of reputation for confronting sexual violence might benefit from concrete action plans. This can further ensure that researchers do not attempt merely to point out social problems or deficits but also to engage in developing solutions.

Perhaps the most important finding of this project was the strategy of reframing the problem. Many scholars in sexual violence research approach their work with a passionate commitment to ending this social problem. The aim of ending sexual violence is enough, in itself. Yet such passion is not necessarily shared by prospective partners, particularly those who do not see themselves as service providers or care workers. When prospective partners are not invested in antiviolence efforts, or view sexual violence as “someone else’s problem,” researchers might reframe the issue such that prevention and response align with more established priorities. This strategy has the potential to considerably expand the scope of individuals and agencies involved in addressing sexual violence, even if some are motivated primarily by such concerns as profit, legal compliance, or educational retention. Prevention and response cannot depend solely on those who are already committed to this issue. If sexual violence is a problem in alcohol-serving establishments, it is essential to partner with bartenders, servers, bouncers, and staff managers. If sexual violence is a problem in college athletics, it is essential to partner with coaches and players. Public sociology, including scholarship focused on ending sexual violence and other feminist ideals, requires engagement with public actors in diverse social domains with far ranging ideals.

It is important to approach this study as an exploratory first step, rather than a definitive and comprehensive account of all challenges and opportunities within researcher-community partnerships. Although these 30 scholars shared a remarkable range of experience in collaboration, they cannot represent the entire interdisciplinary field of sexual violence research. Far more limiting was my exclusive focus on researchers. Subsequent studies should explore researcher-community collaboration from the perspective of diverse community partners. Incorporating a broader range of methods, such as focus groups with researchers and community representatives in different domains, could also be very productive for advancing knowledge on building and sustaining effective relationships. Finally, future research should explore the extent to which the issues and practices observed here are unique to sexual violence work. Perhaps the obstacles and strategies observed in this study will prove relevant to scientists, community members, and institutions engaged with a broader range of social problems.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Ethan Czuy Levine received his PhD from Temple University in 2018. His research focuses on interpersonal violence, gender and sexuality, and social inequality in labor and social services. Outside of academia, he has more than 10 years of experience advocating for survivors of sexual violence. He currently works at Services Empowering Rights of Victims in Southern New Jersey as an LGBTQ+ Outreach Advocate.

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