Community Reporting Thresholds: Sharing Information with Authorities Concerning Terrorism and Targeted Violence, California and Illinois, 2021 (ICPSR 38318)
Parents, siblings, partners, and friends are often the first people to suspect a loved one is on the trajectory towards targeted violence or terrorism. These intimate bystanders are well positioned to facilitate prevention efforts if there are known and trusted reporting pathways to law enforcement or other resources. Little is known in the United States about the reporting processes for intimate bystanders to targeted violence or terrorism. This study is built on previous Australian and United Kingdom studies to understand the processes of intimate bystanders in the United States, in order to inform new, localized and contextually-sensitive understandings of and approaches to community reporting issues.
Qualitative-quantitative interviews were conducted from March 2021 to July 2021 virtually over Zoom with 123 community members living in California and Illinois. The researchers describe their perspectives on barriers, facilitators, and pathways. The study sought to enhance prior studies with a larger and more demographically-diverse sample. It included a focus on ISIS/Al-Qa'eda-inspired foreign-terrorism, White Power movement-inspired domestic terrorism, and--of particular relevance to the US---non-ideologically motivated targeted, workplace violence.
Examining the Role of Physiological and Psychological Responses to Critical Incidents in Prisons in the Development of Mental Health Problems among Correctional Officers, Minnesota, 2018-2020 (ICPSR 38803)
This study sought to better understand the long-term implications of critical incident exposure on mental health outcomes among correctional officers. To accomplish this objective, the research team compiled a longitudinal dataset comprised of three types of assessments. First, to assess mental health outcomes as well as subjective appraisals of psychological stress, the researchers surveyed correctional officers at three waves of data collection, spaced approximately six months apart. These surveys included questions related to demographics, work assignments, perceptions of workplace danger, work-family conflict, social support, and work-related psychological stress. In addition, the wave 1 and wave 3 surveys included items from psychometrically validated measures of mental health problems--posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. Second, to assess changes in physiological stress over the study period, the research team collected salivary biomarkers Cortisol and Alpha-Amylase during each wave of data collection. Third, the researchers compiled objective indicators of critical incident exposure (e.g. disciplinary data and detailed incident reports) rather than relying on subjective assessments. The compiled dataset allowed for not only the direct association between critical incident exposure and mental health problems, but also indirect pathways that included psychological stress and physiological stress. The resulting dataset consists of 488 officers employed at three correctional institutions across Minnesota.