During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, domestic violence came to be understood as a national emergency. In this paper, we ask how and why domestic violence was constructed as a crisis specific to the pandemic. Drawing from newspaper data, we show that the domestic violence victim came to embody the violation of gendered boundaries between “public” and “private” spheres. Representations of domestic violence centered on violence spilling over the boundaries of the home, infecting the home, or the home imploding. While theorists of crisis have focused on the central role of temporality in crisis construction, and especially the performative invocation of “new time,” we argue that crisis rhetoric often relies on anxiety about the transgression of spatial boundaries. Our spatial approach to crisis has two components. First, we argue that crisis framings often invoke the idea that seemingly distinct arenas of social life are becoming disorganized or blurred. And second, because thresholds between social spaces are coded as sacred during crisis, this spatial reordering is rendered dangerous, resulting in calls to resecure boundaries.
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Not All Homes Are Safe: Family Violence Following the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic
Evidence from victim service providers suggests the COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in family violence. However, empirical evidence has been limited. This study uses novel survey data to investigate the occurrence of family violence during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Data come from the second wave of the Assessing the Social Consequences of COVID-19 study, an online non-probability sample collected in April and May 2020. Family violence is measured using four variables: any violence, physical violence, verbal abuse, and restricted access. The authors use logistic regression and KHB decomposition to examine the prevalence of family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that sexual minorities, in particular bisexual people, experienced higher rates of family violence than heterosexual respondents. Women were the only group to report an increase in the frequency of family violence. Household income loss is associated with the incidence of verbal violence. Our findings demonstrate the importance of expanding victim services to address the additional barriers victims face within the pandemic context and beyond, including broad contexts of social isolation and financial precarity experienced by individuals at risk of family violence.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2032371
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10377348
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Family Violence
- ISSN:
- 0885-7482
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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How did the COVID-19 pandemic affect domestic violence? We might expect that the most marginalized victims experienced the most dramatic upticks in violence during the pandemic. However, through life-story interviews, I found that survivors who were enduring abuse, poverty, housing insecurity, and systems involvement pre-COVID did not suffer worse abuse during the pandemic. For multiply marginalized survivors, COVID did not produce more violence directly, but instead worsened the social contexts in which they already experienced violence and related problems, setting them up for future instability. The small group of survivors in this study who did experience COVID as a novel period of violence were likely to be middle-class and better-resourced. To explain these findings, I suggest moving away from a model of crisis as “external stressor.” I offer the concept “clustered vulnerabilities” to explain how—rather than entering in as “shock”—crisis amplifies existing structural problems: social vulnerabilities pile up, becoming denser and more difficult to manage. “Clustered vulnerabilities” better explains crisis in the lives of marginalized people and is useful for analyzing the relationship between chronic disadvantage and crisis across cases.
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null (Ed.)CONTEXT With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting response from universities, engineering students find themselves in an unprecedented situation. In addition to stressors related to the curriculum, residential students across the United States are being asked to relocate away from campus and engage in distance learning. At the same time, social distancing requirements are limiting students’ ability to socialize, procure food and supplies, exercise, and remain employed and financially solvent. Some students will fall ill while others face the prospect of sick family members, and even deaths in the family. Prior research suggests that individuals living through this pandemic are likely to face stress, uncertainty, and fear that affects their mental health and academic performance for years to come. PURPOSE OR GOAL The purpose of this study was to understand the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting engineering students’ mental wellness, specifically stress, and how the effects differ for different groups of students. The research questions addressed are: 1) What effects has the pandemic had on baseline stress levels, and how do those vary by demographic group? 2) What effects has the pandemic had on quality of life, such as sleep habits and financial security, and how do those vary by demographic group? METHODS An online survey was conducted in the United States in May and June of 2020. More than 800 4-year engineering students who represented many engineering disciplines and universities responded. The survey used a modified version of the Holmes-Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale, which is a widely used and validated instrument to measure the effects of certain life events on stress. The data was analysed to determine the average increase in stress levels for students resulting from COVID-19, and which demographic groups have seen the most negative impact. We also report on which stress-inducing life-events were experienced most. OUTCOMES Latinx individuals and international students report statistically significantly higher levels of stress than the baseline population. Engineering students from other historically excluded identities, however,are not facing statistically significantly worse stress than their peers from historically over represented identities. Veterans fare better than the majority population on this metric.The data also indicates that different groups are more likely to experience different negative life-events because of COVID. CONCLUSIONS No previous research has examined the impacts of a global pandemic on engineering student stress and mental wellness. Our findings show that stress and mental wellness need to be understood intersectionally and that some underrepresented groups are disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Understanding the impacts on students can help universities strategize and allocate limited resources most effectively to support student success. KEYWORDS Mental wellness; COVID-19; stressmore » « less
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Fernández-Alcántara, Manuel (Ed.)Background Nurse identification of patient deterioration is critical, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, as patients can deteriorate quickly. While the literature has shown that nurses rely on intuition to make decisions, there is limited information on what sources of data experienced nurses utilize to inform their intuition. The objectives of this study were to identify sources of data that inform nurse decision-making related to recognition of deteriorating patients, and explore how COVID-19 has impacted nurse decision-making. Methods In this qualitative study, experienced nurses voluntarily participated in focused interviews. During focused interviews, expert nurses were asked to share descriptions of memorable patient encounters, and questions were posed to facilitate reflections on thoughts and actions that hindered or helped their decision-making. They were also asked to consider the impact of COVID-19 on nursing and decision-making. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, study team members reviewed transcripts and coded responses, and organized key findings into themes. Results Several themes related to decision-making were identified by the research team, including: identifying patient care needs, workload management, and reflecting on missed care opportunities to inform learning. Participants (n = 10) also indicated that COVID-19 presented a number of unique barriers to nurse decision-making. Conclusions Findings from this study indicate that experienced nurses utilize several sources of information to inform their intuition. It is apparent that the demands on nurses in response to pandemics are heightened. Decision-making themes drawn from participants’ experiences can to assist nurse educators for training nursing students on decision-making for deteriorating patients and how to manage the potential barriers (e.g., resource constraints, lack of family) associated with caring for patients during these challenging times prior to encountering these issues in the clinical environment. Nurse practice can utilize these findings to increase awareness among experienced nurses on recognizing how pandemic situations can impact to their decision-making capability.more » « less
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In March 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic forced universities across the United States to immediately stop face-to-face activities and transition to virtual instruction. While this transition was not easy for anyone, the shift to online learning was especially difficult for STEM courses, particularly engineering, which has a strong practical/laboratory component. Additionally, underrepresented students (URMs) in engineering experienced a range of difficulties during this transition. The purpose of this paper is to highlight underrepresented engineering students’ experiences as a result of COVID-19. In particular, we aim to highlight stories shared by participants who indicated a desire to share their experience with their instructor. In order to better understand these experiences, research participants were asked to share a story, using the novel data collection platform SenseMaker, based on the following prompt: Imagine you are chatting with a friend or family member about the evolving COVID-19 crisis. Tell them about something you have experienced recently as an engineering student. Conducting a SenseMaker study involves four iterative steps: 1) Initiation is the process of designing signifiers, testing, and deploying the instrument; 2) Story Collection is the process of collecting data through narratives; 3) Sense-making is the process of exploring and analyzing patterns of the collection of narratives; and 4) Response is the process of amplifying positive stories and dampening negative stories to nudge the system to an adjacent possible (Van der Merwe et al. 2019). Unlike traditional surveys or other qualitative data collection methods, SenseMaker encourages participants to think more critically about the stories they share by inviting them to make sense of their story using a series of triads and dyads. After completing their narrative, participants were asked a series of triadic, dyadic, and sentiment-based multiple-choice questions (MCQ) relevant to their story. For one MCQ, in particular, participants were required to answer was “If you could do so without fear of judgment or retaliation, who would you share this story with?” and were given the following options: 1) Family 2) Instructor 3) Peers 4) Prefer not to answer 5) Other. A third of the participants indicated that they would share their story with their instructor. Therefore, we further explored this particular question. Additionally, this paper aims to highlight this subset of students whose primary motivation for their actions were based on Necessity. High-level qualitative findings from the data show that students valued Grit and Perseverance, recent experiences influenced their Sense of Purpose, and their decisions were majorly made based on Intuition. Chi-squared tests showed that there were not any significant differences between race and the desire to share with their instructor, however, there were significant differences when factoring in gender suggesting that gender has a large impact on the complexity of navigating school during this time. Lastly, ~50% of participants reported feeling negative or extremely negative about their experiences, ~30% reported feeling neutral, and ~20% reported feeling positive or extremely positive about their experiences. In the study, a total of 500 micro-narratives from underrepresented engineering students were collected from June – July 2020. Undergraduate and graduate students were recruited for participation through the researchers’ personal networks, social media, and through organizations like NSBE. Participants had the option to indicate who is able to read their stories 1) Everyone 2) Researchers Only, or 3) No one. This work presents qualitative stories of those who granted permission for everyone to read.more » « less
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00372-y
