Guest editorial

Citation

Cramer, R.J. and Nobles, M. (2018), "Guest editorial", Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 73-73. https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-04-2018-337

Welcome to issue 10.2 of the Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research. This issue presents the second initiative devoted to advancing campus sexual violence scholarship, yielding an issue entitled “Multidisciplinary approaches to campus safety and sexual violence prevention.” Pertinent topics addressed in this issue span two overarching themes: prevention-focused policies impacting campus safety and violence prevention, and novel approaches to addressing risk and protective factors in prevention and treatment programming.

Four articles in this issue provide contextually- and empirically-grounded analyses of campus safety and violence prevention policies. Newins and White evaluate the extent to which Title IX policy-related knowledge and opinions among both students and faculty impact critical outcomes. Their complex findings suggest interesting contrasts: high faculty willingness to report student victimization, yet noteworthy levels of student resistance to reporting. Macleod et al. provide an international case study summarizing a university response to student protests regarding campus sexual violence policies and culture. The authors document valuable lessons from the establishment of a campus-wide Sexual Violence Task Team addressing campus sexual violence culture. Konradi and Graham conduct a content analysis of publically available accounts concerning the 1990 Campus Security Act, arguing that too much emphasis is placed on victims protecting themselves, while insufficient attention is devoted to dealing with perpetrators of campus sexual assault. Finally, Patel and Roesch provide a scoping review of US and Canadian policies. They find two common themes present in policies impacting campus efforts toward response and intervention: victims services and bystander interventions.

Four additional articles in this extended edition focus on innovative work regarding prevention and treatment programs. Hayes and colleagues survey students to evaluate the impact of online training and a university safety system. Their findings highlight the promise of the university safety system in enhancing perceptions of campus safety. Based on literature review and personal reflection, Finley and Levenson articulate a set of recommendations for capitalizing on faculty as new resources in preventing campus sexual violence. These include, but are not limited to, faculty participating on policy-making taskforces and public health-style campus needs evaluations. Adopting a tertiary prevention perspective, Lamade et al. discuss the need to focus on treatment programs for students found responsible for sexual violence and related concerns. Within this discussion, the authors provide invaluable summaries of barriers and facilitators to implementing treatment programming. Cares et al. conclude the issue examining the effectiveness of a campus-wide social marketing intervention and booster campaign. Their findings show positive impacts on student attitudes and social norms, with promise to strengthen bystander influences on campus sexual violence prevention.

This issue of the Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research is a product of a successful double issue providing new scholarship aimed at understanding and preventing campus sexual violence. We hope the international visibility afforded to the topic, as well as the perspectives represented in all of these articles, help to spur further research and design of evidence-based prevention and intervention programs.