IDVSA’s research focuses on national and local concerns regarding assistance to survivors of interpersonal violence and their interactions with agencies designed to serve them, attitudes and practices of perpetrators that lead to violence, and new approaches to solving those problems. IDVSA’s research examines the intersection of issues of poverty, race, ethnicity, and gender and how these impact the experience of violence.
Feel free to navigate through IDVSA research according to the following categories:
Victim Notification and Untested Sexual Assault Kits
Concerns Related to Refugees, Immigrants, and Detainees
Intimate Partner Violence–Domestic Violence
Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery
Previous Research Spotlights
Human Trafficking by the Numbers
The Statewide Human Trafficking Mapping Project of Texas, launched in 2014 with support from the Criminal Justice Division of the Office of the Texas Governor, found that there are more than 300,000 victims of human trafficking in Texas. This statewide research, conducted in collaboration with the Bureau of Business Research at the IC2 Institute at UT Austin, and Allies Against Slavery, quantifies the prevalence and economic impact of human trafficking across the state of Texas. Read more about this research in the official press release.
You can access the entire research report by clicking the infographic below.
Human Trafficking by the Numbers: The Initial Benchmark of Prevalence and Economic Impact for Texas
Cultivating Learning and Safe Environments (CLASE) Cohort Study
As part of the Cultivating Learning and Safe Environments (CLASE) project, IDVSA will be launching the four-year CLASE Cohort study in November 2016. The aim is to learn more about students’ experiences with sexual harassment, stalking, dating and domestic violence, and unwanted sexual contact throughout their college tenure. The Cohort Study is one of the most innovative aspects of CLASE. It will involve 1200 freshman students that volunteer to participate over their college careers. Research activities will include a web-based repeated measure administered once per semester from Fall 2016 to Spring 2020. The longitudinal nature of the Cohort Study will provide a clearer understanding of trends in students’ experiences over time, and of the long-term effects of victimization on student well-being, mental health, and academic success.
Blueprint for Campus Police: Responding to Sexual Assault
The Blueprint for Campus Police: Responding to Sexual Assault is a partnership between researchers and the UT System Office of Director of Police that intends to fill gaps in current research and identify best practices in campus police response to sexual assault. The Blueprint is a multi-level approach to the complex problem of campus sexual assault (CSA) that builds upon the existing body of knowledge and recognizes the need for identifying emerging best practices. The guidance developed for campus police is empirically driven through in-depth interviews, field observations, and a thorough review of the policies and practices pertaining to CSA. This resource is intended to serve as a guide or toolkit for police at all levels (chief executives, investigation, and patrol) in response to sexual assault crimes with the implementation of victim-centered and trauma-informed approaches. In this way, the Blueprint replaces “tradition with science”.
More information
Press release
Health and Well-Being: Texas Statewide Sexual Assault Prevalence Study (August 2015)
Sexual assault is more pervasive in Texas now than in 2003, the time of the last statewide survey, according to a new study by the Institute on Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault (IDVSA) at The University of Texas at Austin.
“Our science today more accurately measures sexual assault crimes while an increase in public awareness over the past decade may mean that people think differently about their own victimization,” said social work professor Noël Busch-Armendariz, lead investigator and IDVSA director.
The survey also found that 2 in 5 women and 1 in 5 men have experienced some form of sexual assault. Whereas women are primarily sexually assaulted by men, men have an almost equal chance of being assaulted by either a woman or a man.
