This article is a critical feminist study focusing on illustrating how college students who identify as Latinx and women perceive barriers to help-seeking should they experience sexual violence. With this study, we address a gap in the research on help-seeking after sexual assault. The majority of research on this topic focuses on the experiences of European American women and is based on survey data. This study focuses on the perceptions and experiences of Latinx women attending a large, state institution. For data collection, we conducted focus groups and individual interviews. We used grounded theory methods for the data analysis, which resulted in the emergence of one primary category, avoiding shame, and two subcategories (prioritizing the family and prizing virginity). The findings from this study demonstrate how the study participants view prioritizing the family and prizing virginity as barriers to seeking help for sexual assault. These barriers protect the women and their families from experiencing shame. We conclude the article with practice and research implications grounded in the results of this study.
Through the implementation of three photovoice projects, we discovered how photovoice method complements sexual assault climate survey research. Scholars have recently asserted that qualitative and participatory research methods are necessary to conduct a holistic sexual assault climate evaluation. Nevertheless, an indepth analysis of how photovoice complements sexual assault climate research is missing. To fill this gap, we examine photovoice studies focused on sexual assault climates, describe methods one author used to implement three photovoice projects, and demonstrate how the analysis of photovoice data generates findings distinctive from survey research. Our findings show how photovoice contextualizes and personalizes the problem, illustrates subjective and diverse standpoints, and highlight community values and norms. Specific to sexual climates the results demonstrate how society perpetuates a culture of victim-blaming, creates barriers to help-seeking, and how communities can support assault survivors by affirming their recovery process. We conclude the article with implications for practice and research.
The rich learning that accompanies collaborative research practices can go unappreciated without systematic reflection and examination, which is an under-researched area. In this arts-informed inquiry, grounded in the experiences of four scholars, we show how artmaking was integrated into a qualitative research process to represent findings. In the qualitative phase, we analyzed researcher reflections kept throughout the research process to identify themes. Then, we created different art forms to represent the themes. Engaging in artmaking allowed us to be reflexive, strengthened our understanding of collaboration, and how using arts expanded the qualitative findings.
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