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- Creators: Department of Psychology
Activist burnout theory has produced minimal but meaningful literature and research that explores the dynamics of burnout culture, movement in-fighting, marginalized identities, and dimensions of burnout symptoms. Black feminist visionaries and writers such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks have developed theories of love, self-care and community as central to resistance that have informed my research approach. Thus, my study aims to investigate activist burnout from a perspective that marries popular activist burnout theory with these frameworks of self-care and community. I conducted a survey of Arizona State University student organizers and activists (N=34) to address the following research questions: What are the causes and symptoms of burnout for Arizona State University activists and organizers? How have self-care and community played a role in their work and countered burnout? Can working conceptions of self-care and community serve as resistance in ways that feel meaningful to activists? The survey was broken into three dimensions: “Demographics and Experience,” “Burnout,” and “Self-Care and Community.” The results reinforced prior findings on established toxic cultures and burnout symptoms but introduced complications to working theories, such as the connections between cycles of burnout and the cyclical nature of electoral politics along with the roles of chronic and mental illness. Respondents largely demonstrated conceptions of self-care and community as resistance but also demonstrated personal and professional barriers to putting these conceptions into practice.
In intrafamilial Child Sexual Assault (CSA) cases, siblings often confide in each other about their abuse. It is important for defense attorneys to question siblings about their conversations surrounding abuse to assess their credibility and honesty. The present study qualitatively analyzes the content of questions defense attorneys are asking siblings in intrafamilial CSA cases across 67 transcripts. These questions were then categorized into four content categories which included confiding in which the child talked to their sibling about their abuse, co-preparing in which siblings discussed what they would say in court, disclosure in which they discussed whom to disclose the abuse to, and awareness in which they try to ascertain if a sibling was aware of another sibling’s abuse. Within the 67 selected transcripts 1,384 questions were asked about siblings but only 18% (n = 250) were about conversations between the siblings. Of these identified questions, 63.6% of questions asked about confiding, 13.6 % questions asked about co-preparing, 20% of questions asked about disclosure, and 2% of questions asked about awareness. This may indicate a need for these questions to be asked during the child’s forensic interview to elicit an accurate account. Children’s forensic interviews use protocols to help children produce detailed and accurate accounts of abuse and in trials children are likely to experience distress while providing testimony which may lead to a child misremembering or forgetting details of their abuse. Analyzing this study’s qualitative data could aid children undergoing legal procedures when reporting abuse.