Kimberly A. Lonsway's research while affiliated with California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and other places

Publications (29)

Article
Full-text available
The present study was designed to examine the incidence, impact, and perception of sexual harassment in law enforcement by utilizing a mixed methods approach and two data sources. In Study 1, quantitative data were provided by 679 male and female personnel in a large law enforcement agency. In Study 2, 531 female police officers provided qualitativ...
Article
Media coverage often reports "good" news about the criminal justice system's ability to effectively respond to sexual assault, concluding that the past two decades have seen an increase in rape reporting, prosecution, and conviction. The objective of this article is to examine the validity of such conclusions by critically reviewing the strengths a...
Article
The Implications of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) pertaining to medical forensic exams are thoroughly explored in this analysis. The authors were motivated to write this article as a follow-up to a paper by Price (2010) previously published in the Journal of Forensic Nursing. Given the critical importance of this topic to forensic nursing,...
Article
The issue of false reports can be characterized as "the elephant in the middle of the living room" for the field of sexual violence. In this commentary, the author examines how educators respond to this challenge. The author begins by discussing the "2% statistic," which is drawn from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) program. Although it has be...
Article
Women have entered the field of law enforcement in increasing numbers and played a critical role in the development of modern policing. Yet the number of women in law enforcement has remained small and the pace of increase slow. The present study was conducted to evaluate the status of women and their progress within one large law enforcement agenc...
Article
Using rape myth research as a template, we developed a conceptual definition and measurement instrument for the mythology regarding male sexual harassment of women, resulting in the 20-item Illinois Sexual Harassment Myth Acceptance (ISHMA) Scale. Surveys from 337 students in the Midwestern region of the United States revealed that this measure con...
Article
This case study offers a detailed description of the experiences of 13 women who sued their law enforcement agencies for sexual harassment or another form of sex discrimination, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. These women experienced a wide range of negative workplace behaviors with deleterious impact on their psychological, physic...
Article
Research was conducted to determine the prevalence and specific provisions of policies regarding officer-involved domestic violence. First, a national sample of 78 large police agencies was surveyed, and 23 agencies (29%) indicated that they had such a specific policy. However, a number of factors suggests that this estimate is probably artificiall...
Article
Emerging information that rape primarily occurs between acquaintances has not only exploded our understanding of this problem, but forced a reexamination of our notions of prevention. In recent years, the vast majority of rape prevention programs have taken the format of educational workshops, with the underlying assumption that change in rape-supp...
Article
Theories of sexual aggression and victimization have increasingly emphasized the role of rape myths in the perpetuation of sexual assault. Rape myths are attitudes and generally false beliefs about rape that are widely and persistently held, and that serve to deny and justify male sexual aggression against women. Acceptance of such myths has been a...
Technical Report
Full-text available
The issue of false reporting may be one of the most important barriers to successfully investigating sexual assault, especially with cases involving non-strangers. This monograph provides an overview of the issue of false accusations, dispels popular myths about victims and reports, and trains investigators to distinguish the rare false report from...
Article
This study builds on the growing body of literature pertaining to the effects of rape prevention education on college students. Interviews and focus groups were used to explore college students' experiences of undergoing intensive semester-long rape prevention training. The findings of the current study suggest that college student participants dev...
Article
After an accidental shooting at a police training academy, outcomes of the class involved (n = 45) were compared with those of several comparison classes (n = 154) immediately and one year later. Results revealed a modest impact, but an increase in PTSD symptomology was observed from academy training to the one-year follow-up. Recruits in the affec...
Article
This article examines the literature on the physical demands of police work, the use of physical agility testing in police selection, and women's performance as police officers. A survey was conducted with 62 police agencies regarding their physical agility test and the representation of sworn women. Results indicate that the vast majority (89%) of...
Article
The role of trial judges in the litigation process is frequently debated. Are judges to be dispassionate adjudicators, disengaged referees in a sport in which attorneys compete? Or are they charged with a more active role in promoting the substance, form, and process of justice? In the present paper, we explore the judicial role in addressing gende...
Article
The current study examines experiences of interpersonal mistreatment in federal litigation among a random sample of 4,608 practicing attorneys. Using both quantitative and qualitative survey data, we documented the nature and interplay of general incivility, gender-related incivility, and unwanted sexual attention. Nearly 75% of female attorneys ha...
Article
This study evaluates an experimental training program at a Midwestern police academy. In Study 1, one class of police recruits participated in a typical training protocol, and two classes attended the experimental program. Outcomes were compared with quantitative measures and qualitative analysis of performance in a simulated sexual assault intervi...
Article
The current study was designed to evaluate the impact of First Year Campus Acquaintance Rape Education (FYCARE), a mandatory program for first year undergraduates. First, questionnaires were administered to 48 FYCARE participants assessed immediately following workshop participation, 76 FYCARE participants sampled through the unrelated context of i...
Article
Hiring and retaining more women provides numerous important advantages to law enforcement agencies. Research conducted in the United States and internationally has clearly documented that following facts: (1) female officers are as competent as their male counterparts and even excel in certain areas of police performance; (2) female officers are le...
Article
Fifty-four male undergraduates (average age of 19.2, 74% Caucasian, 13% Asian American, 9% Hispanic, and 4% African American) participated in a rape prevention education program in which they listened to an audiotape of a man versus woman describing the experience of being raped (or they listened to no such audiotape). Two weeks later the students...
Article
A series of six studies were conducted to explore the structure underlying rape myths and to develop the 45-item Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (''IRMA''). In the first study, 604 participants (mean age 18.8 years, 53% women) rated their level of agreement with 95 pretested rape myth statements. Exploratory and confir-matory multivariate analy...
Article
As part of a larger multimethod evaluation, this study examined the effects of a uniquely intensive rape education program. Participants included 74 undergraduates (53 women and 21 men) enrolled in Campus Acquaintance Rape Education (CARE), a semester-long university course designed to train peer facilitators to conduct rape education workshops. Ni...
Article
M. R. Burt (1980) concluded that acceptance of rape myths was strongly related to adversarial sexual beliefs, tolerance of interpersonal violence, and gender role stereotyping. However, the scales designed to assess these variables appear to share an emphasis on hostile attitudes toward women. Using alternative measures and 3 samples of undergradua...

Citations

... Хотя, как показано в многочисленных исследованиях обман сам по себе не связан с уникальным паттерном поведения [10,12,27,29,32], в то же время известно, что лжецы могут испытывать конкретные эмоции, в числе которых: страх, возбуждение и чувство вины [12,13]. Исследователи показали, что, обращая внимание на признаки утаиваемых эмоций -микроэкспрессии лица [15] и основного тона голоса [14], можно выявить обман с точность до 80%. В серии экспериментов, с высокой экологической валидностью, было установлено, что ложь на «высоких ставках», когда угроза наказания высока, легче обнаружить, чем ложь на «низких ставках», когда ответственность не предусматривает серьезных санкций [9,18,30]. ...
... Other evaluations have measured changes in participants' knowledge about sexual assault, attitudes toward rape victims, acceptance of rape myths, and levels of self-efficacy and anxiety. [8][9][10][16][17][18][19][20][21] The findings of the majority of these studies are limited because of small sample sizes, short follow-up periods, lack of control groups, and the use of nonbehavioral outcome measures. Moreover, researchers generally find limited evidence for long-term knowledge and attitude-related change as a result of sexual assault prevention program exposure. ...
... Only a few studies have examined attorneys' case strategies. Again, the focus has been on the defense, with researchers emphasizing defense attorney's attempts to imply that children are dishonest or that children's memories have been tainted (Brennan, 1995;Hanna, Davies, Crothers, & Henderson, 2012;Mertz & Lonsway, 1997). However, this research is largely impressionistic, in that examples of different strategies are presented with little quantitative data and no systematic assessment of content. ...
... For example, gender has been found to influence decisions in child custody cases and workplace discrimination cases; decision-makers in such cases may be guided by gendered ideologies of women in caregiving roles and in the workplace (Miller, 2019). Both historic and recent research confirm the pervasiveness of gender biases, defined here as being predisposed to decide in favor or against a particular group of people in accordance with their perceived gender, and endorsement of relevant stereotypes in the courts (Lonsway, 2002;Miller, 2019). Some recent findings of differential treatment of men and women specifically cite subtle biases as a catalyst for the behavior (Tran et al., 2019). ...
... However, since the passage of these laws, the increase in the number of women entering the police profession has slowly started to stagnate or even reverse in some cases. Researchers such as Cordner and Cordner (2011); Kurtz (2012); Lee (2005); Lonsway (2007); Rabe-Hemp (2011a); Schuck (2014); and Shelly, Morabito, and Tobin-Gurley (2011) noticed this stagnation and began to question why this decrease has occurred, suggesting that failing legislation, increased barriers for women, additional obstacles for women, and the policing culture may be to blame. ...
... This issue is overlooked and under-reported all over the world, especially in developing countries and particularly in Pakistan. Studies that have inspected harassment among police personnel have indicated that female workers experienced more instances of harassment than their male counterparts (Lonsway et al., 2013;DeHaas et al., 2009;Somvadee & Morash, 2008;Thompson et al., 2006). These events ranged from being just touched in a manner that made someone uncomfortable, to being earshot of dirty jokes and stories, to being sexually victimized on account of being a woman. ...
... This scale also has the potential to be useful in the field of prevention work for sexual assault and rape, particularly on college campuses. Many interventions that aim to prevent sexual assault and rape on college and high school campuses focus on decreasing RMA (i.e., Fay & Medway, 2006;Lonsway et al., 1998). As such, the development of the GIRMA presents a way for clinicians working in the field of prevention to easily measure RMA in a more holistic way that is more sensitive to current beliefs core to rape culture. ...
... Here we present models built with manifest variables since we already investigated the underlying factor structures of the relevant constructs. In testing the relationship with appraisals and coping responses we controlled for the effect of gender and age on coping responses because one's gender and age may relate to the experience of and coping with mistreatment in the workplace (e.g., Cortina et al., 2002;Hobfoll et al., 1994;Jóhannsdóttir & Ólafsson, 2004). Additionally, given that previous experience of mistreatment can impact how one copes with it (e.g., Cortina & Magley, 2009), we also controlled for the effect of previous experience of workplace ostracism on all coping responses. ...
... For instance, when failing the physical competency test, there are no consequences for officers of one law enforcement agency. Further, the assessments in place are rarely representative of the on-duty work that police officers perform (Lonsway, 2003;Tipton et al., 2013;Petersen et al., 2016;Koedijk et al., 2021). Similar to the modular, segmented structure of training components in the training curricula, currently applied assessment and testing methods evaluate isolated skills such as static shooting on the shooting range or self-defense technique evaluations. ...
... Our findings are consistent with existing research that initial police training is brief (3-6 months in North America; Cordner, 2019;Sloan & Paoline, 2021) and training specific to sexual assault is limited (Lathan et al., 2019). Criticisms of police training include a primary focus on laws and dynamics of the crime as opposed to the victim's response or investigative process (Lonsway et al., 2001). Likewise, the consistency and efficacy of sexual assault training is reported as variable in both quantity and quality (Venema et al., 2020). ...