“The Subject Matter Should Be an Adequate Trigger Warning”: How and Why Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Use (and Don’t Use) Trigger Warnings

Abstract

Trigger warnings are written or oral notifications of course content meant to provide students advance notice of sensitive material that may produce adverse health responses and, therefore, inhibit academic performance. This study examined trigger warning use in an academic discipline that includes a substantial amount of graphic content regarding violence and victimization using survey data from criminal justice and criminology faculty (N = 791). Trigger warning use was widespread − 61.9% of faculty had used a trigger warning. They were largely used to allow students to prepare for upcoming material and because in the faculty’s judgment, the content warranted a trigger warning. Use was highest in Victimology courses, but trigger warnings were used in a wide array of courses. Most faculties had not changed anything in their teaching over concerns about potentially triggering material. Research is needed to see if trigger warnings are helpful to students in criminal justice and criminology courses.

Keywords:

• trigger warning
• content advisory
• college teaching
• pedagogy
• victimology

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Cortney Franklin for early contributions to the project; Daniella Pitruzzello, Assumption College undergraduate research assistant; and Benjamin Comer, Boise State University, Graduate research assistant.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 This research was approved under expedited review by the Assumption College IRB under number 2018-16.

2 We selected this time period to ensure that participants had taught a course during the period when trigger warnings became controversial.

3 Percentages presented here in text and in Table 5 were calculated by dividing the number of participants teaching the course who also reporting using trigger warnings in the course by the number of participants who reported teaching a course. For example, 97 participants reported they have used a trigger warning in Victimology, and 130 participants reported teaching Victimology, which is 74.6%.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an Assumption College Faculty Development Grant and with the Faculty Research Center for Criminal Justice Research, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati.

Notes on contributors

Alison C. Cares

Alison C. Cares, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and a member of the Violence Against Women Cluster at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, U.S. and a visiting scholar with the Justice and Gender Based Violence Research Initiative at Wellesley Centers for Women in Wellesley, Massachusetts, U.S. Her career in the efforts to end gender-based violence started over 25 years ago as a community educator in a sexual assault and domestic violence services agency. Dr. Cares’ research focuses on gender-based violence, primarily intimate partner violence and campus sexual assault. Her recent work has appeared in Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Violence & Victims, and Violence Against Women. She enjoys teaching undergraduate and graduate courses including victimology, sexual violence, domestic violence, and research methods. [email protected]

Lisa Growette Bostaph

Lisa M. Growette Bostaph is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Boise State University. She has been working in the field of victimization for 30 years, starting her career at the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project in Duluth, MN. Dr. Bostaph was also the founder of Project P.E.A.C.E, a crime scene crisis intervention project for four suburbs of Minneapolis, MN serving victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse. She received her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati in 2004. Dr. Bostaph’s research focuses on police decision-making, criminal justice system response to victimization, and criminal justice education. Her recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, Policing: An International Journal, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Child Maltreatment. Dr. Bostaph is currently working on two multi-year, funded projects: a series of research-to-policy reports on victimization and victim services in Idaho and a collection of studies examining the prevalence, incidence, and systemic response to the victimization of people with disabilities. She regularly teaches courses in policing, victimization, research methods, and criminal justice theory.

Bonnie S. Fisher

Bonnie S. Fisher is a Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests span victimological topics ranging from the measurement of interpersonal violence against college students to the identification of theory-based predictors of interpersonal victimization to understanding state-level regulation of campus conceal carry laws to evaluating bystander intervention behavior. During her career, she has published her work in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Psychology of Violence, Feminist Criminology, Journal of School Violence, American Journal of Public Health, American Journal of College Health, and Violence Against Women. She is the coauthor of the Dark Side of the Ivory Tower, Unsafe in the Ivory Tower, and Campus Crime; Legal, Social and Policy Perspectives, 4^th Edition.

Arelys Madero Hernandez

Arelys Madero-Hernandez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Shippensburg University. A Fulbright Scholar, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. At Shippensburg University, Dr. Madero coordinates the first and only undergraduate-level certificate in Victimology and Victim Services in the Pennsylvania System of Higher Education. Her research focuses on crime prevention strategies and practices, the link between race/ethnicity and victimization, and the repercussions of immigration on criminal justice outcomes. Her work has been published in Justice Quarterly, Victims & Offenders, Race & Justice, and the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

Shameika Daye

Shameika D. Daye, MPA, is a Sociology doctoral candidate at the University of Central Florida. She has worked in higher education for over 15 years and works in faculty and academic affairs. Her research focuses on how racialized and gendered practices impact the Black woman’s embodied experiences in various institutions. Her work has been published in Gender Issues.