INTRODUCTION: Despite legal efforts to reduce societal barriers, people with disabilities still face anti-disability bias, stereotyping, and stigma. According to the social movement hypothesis, people’s participation in and identification with activist movements may reduce bias towards social outgroups. Alternatively, people’s intergroup attitudes and bias may influence their participation in activist activities. METHODS: This study used structural equation modeling to investigate whether reduced bias towards people with disabilities is associated with critical activism and/or personal, familial, or work experience with disability. Undergraduates (N = 497) completed an online survey including measures of anti-disability bias, critical activist orientation, experience with disability, and demographic characteristics. RESULTS: The relation between having a critical activist orientation and lower anti-disability bias was bidirectional, suggesting reciprocal influences between individual-level attitudes and participation in social movements. Aligning with intergroup contact theory, personal and familial experience with disability correlated with reduced anti-disability bias, and familial and work experience with having a critical activist orientation. Male gender correlated with increased anti-disability bias, and male gender, White race, and higher social class with lower endorsements of a critical activist orientation. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that disability experience and social status influence critical activist identity, which predicts lower bias.

Sexual violence is a world-wide health problem that has begun to escalate in online and virtual spaces. One form of technology-facilitated sexual violence that has escalated in recent years is image-based sexual abuse (IBSA), or the nonconsensual creation, distribution, and/or threat of distribution of nude or sexual images. Using a trauma-informed and victim-centered framework, we asked victim-survivors for structural solutions to IBSA based on their own experiences. Using thematic analysis on 36 semi-structured interviews with adult U.S. victim-survivors of IBSA, we found that victim-survivors proposed structural solutions to IBSA along 5 general dimensions: legal (creating/strengthening laws, enforcing laws, facilitating legal navigation), corporate (corporate responsibility/activism and solutions for employers), educational (IBSA education, outreach and advocacy, and developing communities of support), technological (more platform accountability, improved procedures for uploading images, better avenues for reporting and removing images, and enhanced platform policies), and cultural. Many solutions built on existing structures (e.g., sexual education in schools) and frameworks (e.g., creating support groups like those for people in recovery from alcohol abuse), enabling educational professionals, policy makers, victim-support service providers, and corporations to readily implement them.

Objective: Institutions of higher education (IHE) have faced increasing pressure to comply with federal regulations and reform their response to campus sexual assault (CSA). This study explores whether decoupling, or organizational resistance to change, is associated with the number and timing of CSA reforms adopted. Participants: A web-based survey of IHE employees familiar with sexual assault policy implementation on their campus asked about types of reforms, timing, decoupling, and campus characteristics. Method: Correlations and t-tests were run to examine the types of reforms across time periods, and regression assessed the degree to which decoupling was associated with the number and timing of reforms. Results: Higher decoupling was associated with fewer reforms in the early period and more in the late period, though not with the overall number of reforms adopted. Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of understanding factors that influence change on campuses.

Little is known about longitudinal health risks and justice involvement among juvenile justice system (JJS) populations. This study used a sample of n = 388 males involved in the JJS to examined longitudinal associations of a latent health risk factor, comprised of depression, marijuana use, and sexually transmitted infections, with post-JJS placement. Results indicate the health risk factor was relatively stable over three time points of JJS entry and associated with present and future JJS placement. Youths who were Hispanic, older, or living with a family member struggling with alcohol use had higher health risk. These findings underscore the need for JJS services that address health risks among persistent juvenile offenders, with consideration of cultural and family dynamics.