Title of Project:
“I’m a Child of the King and I Will Not Be a Victim”: A Case Study of the Impact of a Christian Women’s Self-Defense Course
About This Study:
My name is Amanda Allen, and I am a PhD Candidate at Asbury Theological Seminary and alumnus of Wheaton College. I am researching Christian women’s self-defense for my dissertation and would like to invite you to participate in an online research study exploring spirituality and self-defense. You are eligible to participate in this study if you took the for-credit self-defense class at Wheaton College any time between 1968 and 2011. This study seeks to answer how participating in this class impacted your faith-life and how it enabled you to respond to gender-based violence as a Christian. Wheaton's self-defense course (taught exclusively by Marilyn Scribner), being an explicitly Christian self-defense course, and also being a co-ed course that ran for over 40 years, offers a unique research opportunity for several reasons. First, research has shown that self-defense can improve students’ self-esteem and self-efficacy, but very few research projects explore how such classes might influence faith or spirituality. Furthermore, few researchers have been able to explore the impact a class has across generations of students or how it may have impacted participants over the course of their lifetimes. Furthermore, few self-defense studies have been able to include co-ed components since most campus-based self-defense research centers around women-only self-defense classes. Yet all of these components can help us shape better Christ-centered, holistic, preventative tools to address violence against women around the world and help us meet the needs of our times. This is why I am doing this research.
Research Ethos
All of your responses, to both the survey and interview, will be handled in a non-judgmental and compassionate manner, with care and concern for each research participant individually. All research instruments are vetted by Asbury’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and I am committed to treating you and all research participants with the highest degree of respect, honor, and confidentiality.
Compensation and Voluntary Participation
No compensation is offered for participating in this study and participating in it is completely voluntary. You may withdraw your consent to participate at any time during the research process. For example, during the survey you may skip questions, stop the survey, or withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. During the interview you may choose whether or not you would like the interview audio recorded (video recording is only a back up in case there's a problem with the audio recorder). During the interview itself, you may take a break, change topics, stop the interview, or withdraw from the study at any point without penalty.
Confidentiality
Protecting your confidentiality is very important to this study! In order to safeguard your privacy, the survey is completely anonymous. With both the survey and interview, your responses will be grouped into half-decade cohorts with no individualized identifying markers attached to them. All raw data from both the survey and interview will be anonymized (removing names, locations, and other identifying content) before being analyzed and the entire process will be kept confidential. The data will be stored securely, in compliance with Asbury’s IRB, and I am the only one to have access to it. Further confidential measures in the published dissertation include disguising all participants through the use of pseudonyms and creating composite persons as examples of research findings within the finished work to ensure your anonymity.
Risks to Participants
Risk During the Research Process: Several questions in both the survey and interview are related to possible past traumatic experiences, including past instances of sexual assault. Specifically, in both the survey and interview, some questions ask about possible sexual assault/harassment experiences before taking the class, and what the class's impact was on you because of that. There are also several questions related to being in situations where you may have been threatened or been in danger and needed to use self-defense techniques to protect yourself or others. Finally, there is an instrument asking about your confidence as a bystander to speak up against the mistreatment of others. It is possible you may experience some discomfort or distress as a result of thinking about those events.
Risk During Disseminating Results: There is no risk that you, as an individual, will be identified within this study. However, readers will know that this study is talking about the Wheaton self-defense class run by Marilyn Scribner. There is, therefore, a risk that if readers know someone who attended class within a specific 1/2 decade, they will get an idea of the general experience and impact the class had on the person they know.
Methods to Minimize Risks to Participants
Minimizing Risk During the Research Process: The survey is completely anonymous. During the survey, you may skip questions, stop the survey, or withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. At the sensitive sections of the survey, you will be reminded that responses will be handled in a compassionate and non-judgmental manner. Additionally, throughout the survey I provide a link to my resources page, which hosts a list of current supporting resources if you are in need of help, including the National Sexual Assault Hopeline, National Domestic Violence Hotline, and National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. Click on the link at any time and you will have multiple helpful resources at your fingertips. Similarly, during the interview, your participation is completely voluntary and you have the right to take a break, change topics, stop the interview, or withdraw from the study at any point without penalty. In the interview process, your comfort is of primary importance. For example, if you are uncomfortable with a certain question, I will change direction or pause and allow you to gather composure and also flag that question for further review. All answers will be handled in a non-judgmental and compassionate manner, with care and concern for each participant individually. Once the interview is complete, I will guide us through a debriefing process where you have the opportunity to discuss you experiences of the interview. Additionally, I will have the list of resources readily available to send to you should you need it at your disposal.
Minimizing Risk During Disseminating Results: Again, protecting your privacy and confidentiality is extremely important to this research project. To protect you, you will be grouped in a half-decade cohort, which means there are 5 years or 10 semesters of individuals that will help keep you anonymous if specific demographic markers are used in analysis. Furthermore, I will use pseudonyms and create composite persons as examples from research findings to ensure confidentiality and anonymity. Readers will know that the "persons" they are reading about are not individuals they could possibly identify but a compilation of several individuals distilled into a single example, so there is no risk that you will be identified individually.
Benefits to Participants:
Participating in this study has several potential benefits for you. First, this is an opportunity to recall and share your fun or enjoyable experiences of the class and remember the empowering feeling you got from participating in the class. This has an added benefit of reawakening old self-defense material/skills you may have forgotten but find newly relevant for your life today. In addition, if this study brings up unpleasant instances of needed to use self-defense, some people find that retrospectively speaking about such struggles and difficult times with someone who is an empathic listener, and who understands such situations, can help you feel less isolated, gives you insight into yourself, and helps you see how you have grown or changed as a result of the experience. Having shared these experiences with another person, and having the resource list at your fingertips while processing these experiences, may make it easier for you to reach out for help if you need to. Also, I must note that while my research ethos is generally compassionate and understanding, I am also I am a survivor of sexual violence myself and have volunteered at a local domestic violence shelter teaching women’s self-defense (pre-pandemic). So, I understand the tender nature of where interviews may go and strongly work toward the health and well-being of all participants in this study.
Contact Information
If you have any questions about this study, please contact me at: Amanda.allen@asburyseminary or Amanda.allen@ezerselfdefense.com, or Asbury Theological Seminary's Institutional Review Board at irb@asburyseminary.edu.