Verónica Caridad Rabelo

Sexual Assault Training in the Military: Evaluating Efforts to End the “Invisible War”

Sexual assault is an insidious problem in the United States military. In 2005 the Department of Defense (DoD) created the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, which centralizes responsibility for sexual assault training. However, this training initiative has undergone little evaluation by outside researchers. Addressing this need, we analyzed responses from over 24,000 active duty personnel who completed the 2010 DoD Workplace and Gender Relations Survey. We assessed whether sexual assault training exposure (None, Minimal, Partial, or Comprehensive) predicted accurate knowledge of sexual assault resources and protocols. Using a social-ecological framework, we investigated whether institutional and individual factors influenced Service members’ training exposure and judgment of training effectiveness. According to our results, exposure to comprehensive training predicted lower sexual assault incidence and superior knowledge. However, comprehensive training differed as a function of military branch, rank, gender, and sexual assault history. Judgments of training effectiveness also varied across these dimensions. Our results highlight the importance of considering context, gender, and victimization history when evaluating institutional efforts to end sexual violence. The DoD’s 2010 annual report on military sexual assault concluded that “most Active Duty members receive effective training on sexual assault” (p. 104). Our results cast doubt on that assertion.

Intersectionality: Infusing I-O Psychology with Feminist Thought

Industrial and organizational psychology, or I-O, is concerned with the study of human behavior in the context of work. Since the growth of I-O psychology over the past century, research on diversity has proliferated, with much of this scholarship focusing on a single axis of diversity, such as gender or race/ethnicity. However, research that examines a single axis of identity (e.g., gender) tends to focus on the most prototypical subordinate members of that group (e.g., White women) at the expense of considering other group members who hold additional subordinate identities (e.g., women of color and/or transwomen). One consequence of the single-axis approach that pervades I-O diversity research is the erasure, invisibility, and marginalization of people with multiple subordinated identities. In contrast to this single-axis approach, intersectionality is a feminist framework that accounts for the mutual interdependency of multiple social identities: the meanings of one social identity group depend on its intersections with other identity groups. Intersectionality is concerned with the simultaneous interplay of various social group memberships and the location of these social groups within larger structures of power, privilege, and oppression. In this chapter, we aim to provide I-O psychologists with an introduction to intersectionality as an analytical lens for research. Intersectionality as an analytical lens serves as an approach to guide the formulation, testing, and interpretation of research questions. This chapter is structured as follows. We begin with a brief history of intersectionality scholarship, an important branch of feminist theory spearheaded by women of color. Next, we discuss the relevance and importance of intersectionality to I-O psychology. Finally, we provide guidelines and challenges for I-O psychologists interested in engaging with intersectionality in their research.

From distrust to distress: Associations among military sexual assault, organizational trust, and occupational health.

Objective: Workplace violence is underreported, in part due to lack of trust in the system—an organization’s ability to protect victims’ safety, confidentiality, and dignity. We focus on military sexual assault—a form of workplace violence—aiming to (a) identify factors that relate to employee trust in the organization’s sexual assault response system and (b) determine how trust in this system (or lack thereof) is associated with well-being. Method: Participants were drawn from a representative sample of U.S. military personnel (542 victims of past-year sexual assault and a random sample of 1,000 individuals who did not experience sexual assault in the past year). Results: Trust differed by personal and organizational characteristics. Notably, trust was higher among men (vs. women), nonvictims (vs. past-year victims of sexual assault), members of the air force (vs. other service branches), and personnel who recalled comprehensive training related to sexual assault prevention and response (vs. minimal or no training). Further, lower trust in the system predicted lower work satisfaction and coworker satisfaction, more negative health perceptions, more greater symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress, and lower intent to remain on active duty. These negative outcomes emerged beyond the effects of past-year sexual assault and combat. Conclusions: Trust that an organization will protect employees’ safety, confidentiality, and dignity if they report violence is important to both mental and occupational health, for both victims and nonvictims alike. In short, workplace violence can be devastating and so can (non)responsiveness to violence by the larger institution.

Teaching Mindfulness to Undergraduates: A Survey and Photovoice Study

How do emerging adults experience mindfulness and compassion? The goals of this study were to (1) evaluate the effectiveness of a mindfulness curricular intervention and (2) examine how students interpreted their experience. We delivered a mindfulness curriculum to 24 college students who meditated twice a week for 7 weeks. Students completed a survey at the beginning and end of the course where they self-reported information about their mental health, compassion, and creativity. Results showed that, over the course of the semester, students demonstrated improvements in measures of creativity, self-compassion, compassion toward others, mental health, and emotional regulation. To gain a more nuanced understanding of students’ interpretations of and experiences with the course material, we used interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) to analyze student photovoice projects (wherein they collected and analyzed images to represent mindfulness concepts). Findings illustrate how students typically understood self-compassion as self-acceptance, self-reflection, or self-care and understood compassion toward others as active alleviation, familial affection/affinity, interdependence, and mortality. Triangulating survey and IPA results demonstrate how contemplative practices such as mindfulness can help students cope with stressors associated with emerging adulthood. Integrating mindfulness practices in higher education is important for students’ transformative learning and holistic development. Further, our research suggests that contemplative education can benefit from using mixed methods (e.g., surveys and photovoice) to help students understand mindfulness and its connections with personal outcomes (e.g., learning, creativity, and well-being).

(Missing) Knowledge about sexual assault resources: Undermining military mental health

In 2005, the Department of Defense reformed military sexual assault (MSA) prevention and response efforts. However, research suggests that some Service members may not be informed of MSA resources. We examined how lacking such knowledge may undermine psychological well-being (i.e., symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress) among MSA survivors as well as Service members who feel unsafe from MSA. The data were collected by the DoD in 2010 and sampled active duty Service women and men. Experiencing MSA, feeling unsafe from MSA, and lacking knowledge of MSA resources predicted greater psychiatric symptoms. Service members who felt unsafe from MSA reported greater psychiatric symptoms as a function of lacking knowledge of MSA resources. Findings suggest that education about sexual assault resources may be critical for the protection of mental health—among survivors and nonvictims alike.

Men and Masculinity at Work: Implications for Theory, Research, and Practice

Although men constitute the majority of most workforces, comparatively little organizational research has examined the roles of men and masculinity within organizational culture and behavior. This session will complicate and deepen our understanding of men and masculinity in the workplace by addressing the following questions: what is the meaning and relevance of masculinity in the workplace? What is meant by a masculine organizational culture? What are some benefits—to individuals and organizations—of masculinity in the workplace? What are some potential consequences? To what extent can an understanding and application of masculinity theory help us to identify, or even challenge, inequality in the workplace? First, Alyson Byrne and Julian Barling examine marital well-being among wives who out-earn their husbands. Second, Thorsten Busch, Florence Chee, and Alison Harvey analyze gendered hostilities perpetuated via digital media as a matter of corporate social responsibility. Following the theme of institu...