Katrin Mueller-Johnson

Bio: Katrin Mueller-Johnson is an academic researcher from University of Cambridge. The author has contributed to research in topics: Psychopathology & Mental health. The author has an hindex of 8, co-authored 25 publications receiving 173 citations. Previous affiliations of Katrin Mueller-Johnson include University of Oxford.

Sexual Victimization of Youth With a Physical Disability An Examination of Prevalence Rates, and Risk and Protective Factors

Abstract: Children with disabilities have been shown to be at greater risk of victimization than those without. Although much of the research combines disability of any type into a single disability category, recent evidence suggests that not all types of disabilities are equally associated with victimization. To date, little knowledge exists about the victimization of youth with physical disabilities. This study used data from a national school-based survey of adolescents (n = 6,749, mean age = 15.41, SD = .66) in Switzerland to investigate sexual victimization (SV) among physically disabled youth. Two subtypes of SV were differentiated: contact SV, including penetration or touching/kissing, and non-contact SV, such as exhibitionism, verbal harassment, exposure to sexual acts, or cyber SV. A total of 360 (5.1%) youth self-identified as having a physical disability. Lifetime prevalence rates for contact SV were 25.95% for girls with a physical disability (odds ratio [OR] = 1.29 compared with able-bodied girls), 18....

Sexting, Online Sexual Victimization, and Psychopathology Correlates by Sex: Depression, Anxiety, and Global Psychopathology.

Abstract: Recent research on sexting highlighted a relationship between this new technology-mediated behavior and psychopathology correlates, although up to date results are mixed, and so far, studies have often used simple and not clinically validated measures of mental health. This study aimed to investigate sexting behaviors, online sexual victimization, and related mental health correlates using clinically validated measures for global psychopathology, anxiety, and depression; and doing so separately for men and women. The sample consisted of 1370 Spanish college students (73.6% female; 21.4 mean age; SD = 4.85) who took part in an online survey about their engagement in sexting behaviors, online sexual victimization behaviors, and psychopathological symptomatology, measured by a sexting scale and the Listado de Sintomas Breve (brief symptom checklist) (LSB-50), respectively. Out of our total sample, 37.1% of participants had created and sent their own sexual content (active sexting), 60.3% had received sexual content (passive sexting), and 35.5% had both sent and received sexual content, with significant differences between male and female engagement in passive sexting. No differences were found between men and women in the prevalence of their victimization by nonconsensual dissemination of sexual content; however, women were more pressured and threatened into sexting than men. Sex differences in psychopathology were found only for depression prevalence rates but not for global psychopathology or anxiety. Furthermore, for male participants, our results showed a significant association only between online sexual victimization and psychopathology but not for consensual active and passive sexting. However, for the female participants, active sexting, passive sexting, and online sexual victimization were all associated with poorer mental health. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Is tenure justified? An experimental study of faculty beliefs about tenure, promotion, and academic freedom

Abstract: The behavioral sciences have come under attack for writings and speech that affront sensitivities. At such times, academic freedom and tenure are invoked to forestall efforts to censure and terminate jobs. We review the history and controversy surrounding academic freedom and tenure, and explore their meaning across different fields, at different institutions, and at different ranks. In a multifactoral experimental survey, 1,004 randomly selected faculty members from top-ranked institutions were asked how colleagues would typically respond when confronted with dilemmas concerning teaching, research, and wrong-doing. Full professors were perceived as being more likely to insist on having the academic freedom to teach unpopular courses, research controversial topics, and whistle-blow wrong-doing than were lower-ranked professors (even associate professors with tenure). Everyone thought that others were more likely to exercise academic freedom than they themselves were, and that promotion to full professor was a better predictor of who would exercise academic freedom than was the awarding of tenure. Few differences emerged related either to gender or type of institution, and behavioral scientists' beliefs were similar to scholars from other fields. In addition, no support was found for glib celebrations of tenure's sanctification of broadly defined academic freedoms. These findings challenge the assumption that tenure can be justified on the basis of fostering academic freedom, suggesting the need for a re-examination of the philosophical foundation and practical implications of tenure in today's academy.

Male Stranger Rape: A Behavioral Model of Victim-Offender Interaction

Abstract: Existing empirical typologies of stranger rape derive almost exclusively from samples involving female victims and male offenders. This study explored the behavioral structure of 209 cases of stranger rape involving male victims and male offenders with the aim of developing an interpersonal model of offender-victim interaction. Multivariate analysis revealed three themes of offender-victim interaction: hostility, involvement intimacy, and involvement exploitation. Of offenders, 80% could be classified to a dominant theme, with almost half of the offenses (49%) classified as involvement intimate. The findings are discussed in relation to existing multivariate models of female victim rape, male rape research, and implications for behavioral investigative advice.

The Danish Crime Harm Index: How It Works and Why It Matters

Abstract: How can Danish Police calculate a single metric, similar to the Cambridge Crime Harm Index (Sherman, Neyroud and Neyroud 2016), that allows the total harm from all victim-reported crimes to be compared over time and across different areas, offenders, gangs, and victims, and what difference can it make in analyzing crime? This analysis examines 2,129,550 reported criminal incidents in the national police crime reports spanning 16 years (2011–2016) and 93% of all of the crime categories in the Danish Criminal Code, excluding those that are primarily detected through proactive policing. It uses the officially recommended days of imprisonment for each crime type to generate the weight of punishment that would be applied if one offender were convicted of each crime, by standards independent of prior criminal history of the offender. The analysis coded the recommended number of days in prison for each offense type based on guidelines set out by the Danish Office of Public Prosecutions. The sentencing value from the prosecutor guidelines was reviewed by five prosecutors. The reliability between the prosecutor ratings and the prosecutor guidelines’ sentencing value was calculated by using Cronbach’s alpha (α = 0.93). While the count of all victim-reported criminal events in Denmark in 2016 had dropped by 14% (54,000 fewer crimes) from 393,000 in 2011, the Danish Crime Harm Index value (after excluding adult rapes due to a 2015 change in reporting rules) for all victim-reported crimes rose by 0.5% or 46,640 days of recommended imprisonment, from 9,714,057 recommended days of imprisonment in 2011 to 9,760,697 days in 2016. Including rapes, the Danish CHI rose by 6% from 2011 through 2016. Because the Danish Crime Harm Index (DCHI) can lend a completely different perspective (and opposite direction) for interpreting crime trends, it can do the same across individuals and areas within Denmark. The value of adding the DCHI totals to the historic reporting of crime counts would seem to be substantial, at all levels of analysis.

National hiring experiments reveal 2:1 faculty preference for women on STEM tenure track

Abstract: National randomized experiments and validation studies were conducted on 873 tenure-track faculty (439 male, 434 female) from biology, engineering, economics, and psychology at 371 universities/colleges from 50 US states and the District of Columbia In the main experiment, 363 faculty members evaluated narrative summaries describing hypothetical female and male applicants for tenure-track assistant professorships who shared the same lifestyle (eg, single without children, married with children) Applicants’ profiles were systematically varied to disguise identically rated scholarship; profiles were counterbalanced by gender across faculty to enable between-faculty comparisons of hiring preferences for identically qualified women versus men Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and non–math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference Results were replicated using weighted analyses to control for national sample characteristics In follow-up experiments, 144 faculty evaluated competing applicants with differing lifestyles (eg, divorced mother vs married father), and 204 faculty compared same-gender candidates with children, but differing in whether they took 1-y-parental leaves in graduate school Women preferred divorced mothers to married fathers; men preferred mothers who took leaves to mothers who did not In two validation studies, 35 engineering faculty provided rankings using full curricula vitae instead of narratives, and 127 faculty rated one applicant rather than choosing from a mixed-gender group; the same preference for women was shown by faculty of both genders These results suggest it is a propitious time for women launching careers in academic science Messages to the contrary may discourage women from applying for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) tenure-track assistant professorships

The Burglary as Clue to the Future: The Beginnings of Prospective Hot-Spotting

Abstract: Predicting when and where crimes are likely to occur is crucial for prioritizing police resources. Prior victimization is an excellent predictor of risk. Repeat victimization, when it occurs, tends to occur swiftly after an initial incident. The predictive power of prior victimization is greater than that of other analysed variables (see Budd 1999). Self-evidently, prior victimization yields no prediction about properties as yet unvictimized. This article, using data about the crime of domestic burglary, contends that research should seek to realize the predictive potential to be gained from both pre-and post-victimization factors. One of the advantages of crime reduction through the prevention of repeats is that it offers a constant (and, it is hoped, declining) rate of events that trigger preventive action, and hence a natural pace for preventive work. In that spirit, postvictimization prevention should, as well as targeting the victimized home, also protect other properties that are similar with respect to the dimensions used by burglars in target selection. The central purpose of the research here reported is to identify the ways in which it is prudent to allocate crime reduction resources in the wake of an offence and across time and location relative to the burgled home. We analysed police-recorded crime burglary data for the county of Merseyside. Using statistical techniques developed to study the transmission of disease, we first confirmed that burglaries do cluster in space and time. The operational payoff of this result is that a residential burglary flags the elevated risk of further residential burglaries in the near future (1-2 months) and in close proximity (up to 300-400 metres) to the victimized home. Put simply, the burglary event should trigger preventive action that is not restricted to the burgled home. The data enable prospective burglary hot-spotting.

Risk factors for child sexual abuse victimization: A meta-analytic review.

Abstract: Experiencing child sexual abuse (CSA) is a major public health problem with serious consequences for CSA victims. For effective assessment and (preventive) intervention, knowledge on risk factors and their effects is crucial. Here, the aim was to synthesize research on associations between (putative) risk factors and CSA victimization. In total, 765 (putative) risk factors were extracted from 72 studies, which were classified into 35 risk domains. A series of three-level meta-analyses produced a significant mean effect for 23 of the 35 risk domains ranging from r = .101 to r = .360. The strongest effects were found for prior victimization of the child and/or its family members, such as prior CSA victimization of the child and/or siblings (r = .360), prior victimization of the child other than child abuse (r = .340), prior or concurrent forms of child abuse in the child's home environment (r = .267), and a parental history of child abuse victimization (r = .265). Other identified risks were related to parental problems (e.g., intimate partner violence, r = .188), parenting problems (e.g., low quality of parent-child relation, r = .292), a non-nuclear family structure (e.g., having a stepfather, r = .118), family problems (e.g., social isolation, r = .191), child problems (e.g., having a mental/physical chronic condition, r = .193), and other child characteristics (e.g., being female, r = .290). Moderator analyses suggested that contact CSA victimization may be better predicted than noncontact CSA victimization. It was concluded that an ecological perspective on preventing CSA victimization is necessary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).