Mary Koss, PhD, is a Regents’ Professor in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. She published the first national study of sexual assault among college students in 1987, which is the subject of I Never Called it Rape: The Ms. Report on Recognizing, Fighting and Surviving Date and Acquaintance Rape (2019). The story of this work is featured on National Public Radio’s This American Life, https://www.thisamericanlife.org/770/my-lying-eyes In 2022 she published a 30-year prevalence comparison in new national data that demonstrate sexual exploitation occurs even more frequently now than then. Especially salient were the percentage of rapes that involved victims incapacitated by alcohol. Her ongoing prevention work is funded by NIAAA and is a clinical trial of a sexual assault bystander prevention program focusing on staff of liquor serving establishments (Safer Bars). 

Koss led the 14-member team that has recently revised the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES-V, 2024) to measure sexual exploitation prevalence, which is explored in a 6-article special issue of The Journal of Sex Research published open access in July 2024. The SES-V materials are available on Open Science https://osf.io/hxpsk For a survey demonstration on mobile phone, click: https://uarizona.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6A64XSPRlCReRTM (looks best if done from a phone).

Koss was the principal investigator of the RESTORE Program; the first [and still only] restorative justice program for sex crimes among adults that was quantitatively and qualitatively evaluated and published in scientific peer review journals. With a colleague, she recently worked on a listening project to learn what survivor victims say they needed to help them recover, their experiences with justice, and their reactions to the restorative justice conferencing model. Recognizing the mismatch between victims perceived post-assault needs and what key informants envision as their service scope, she advocates for victim-centered, trauma informed resolution outside the criminal legal system as a component of a comprehensive menu of post-assault services (Chisolm & Koss, 2024, International Journal of Restorative Justice and 2024 Violence Against Women). An article illustrating how this vision could be accomplished within existing VAWA purpose areas recently appeared in Psychology of Violence.

Her credentials document close to 200 peer review empirical publications and sustained consultations with national and international health organizations and governments. She has received honors from the American Psychological Association: the Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy (2000), Award for Distinguished Contributions to the International Advancement of Psychology (2017), the Carolyn Wood Sherif Award for Sustained Contributions to Psychology of Women (2020), and the Trailblazer Award (2022) from the Sexual Violence Research Initiative based in Johannesburg, South Africa.      

Recent Webinars for workforce development are viewable on YouTube including:

University of South Carolina School of Law (2021) Fundamentals of Restorative Justice
https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/DOsbCkUzAJiAqxQ-q0ANmb5WXnEaYcs-Li0-XBtELOPRVrMw5LVpcwwsJDncHYM5.Kh5RXrX-bJkXGU-x

One Standard of Justice (2021). Experience from Practicing Restorative Justice for Sexual Harm.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apTShtlJ7lo

Society for Scientific Study of Social Issues (2023). How do you make your research matter to policy makers and practitioners?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSYAQqrltXE

Koss is included as a significant feminist voice in the history of psychology history of feminist psychology https://feministvoices.com/profiles/mary-koss Her 2018 op-ed on differentiating sexual abuse, sexual assault and sexual harassment that appeared in The Conversation has received more than 1.4 million views; her most recent work published on this site addresses how people facilitate sexual exploitation through enabling, complicity, and co-perpetration. 

She currently advises the USAID [United States Agency for International Development] Taskforce on Sexual Misconduct and the American Psychological Association Advisory Group on Women’s Health.

Educational Background

University of Michigan, AB with high distinction, Psychology

University of Minnesota, PhD, Clinical Psychology

Expertise

Epidemiology of violence, with emphasis on measuring violence against women, sexual assault victim’s justice and healing needs, violence prevention programs, program evaluation, and public policy focusing on violence against women and restorative justice. 

Selected Publications past two years

1. Chisolm, K., & Koss, M.P. (2024).  Innovative services for survivors of sexual violence:  Mapping new pathways forward.  Violence Against Women, 30(4), 567–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778012231123456

2. Peitzmeier, S., Todd, K., King, W., Church, D., Thornburgh, S., Adams, M.P., Koss, M.P., Senn, C.Y. (2024). Toward a More Gender-Inclusive Sexual Experiences Survey: Development and Initial Validation with Transgender and Gender-Expansive Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 48(1), 5–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/03616843231123456

3. Lamade, R. V., Lopez, E. C., Calias, S., Anderson, E. J., & Koss, M. P. (2024). Healing strategies of women who experienced sexual assault: A mixed method analysis. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 16(6), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001766

4. Koss, M. P., Anderson, R., Peterson, Z. D., Littleton, H., Abbey, A., Kowalski, R., ... & Allen, C. (2024). The revised Sexual Experiences Survey Victimization version (SES-V): Conceptualization, modifications, items and scoring. The Journal of Sex Research, 61(6), 839-867. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2358407

5. Peterson, Z.D., Littleton, H.L., Anderson, R.E., & Koss, M.P. (2024).  Quantifying criminal sexual acts: The illegal sexual exploitation module of the Revised Sexual Experiences Survey-Victimization (SES-V) measure.  The Journal of Sex Research, 61 (6) 868-881. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2358408

6. Anderson, R. E., Peterson, Z. D., Canan, S. N., Abbey, A., McCauley, H., Orchowski, L. M., ... & Koss, M. P. (2024). Words can hurt: A taxonomy of verbally pressured sexual exploitation in the SES-V. The Journal of Sex Research, 61(6), 882-896. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2358414

7. Chisolm, K., & Koss, M.P. (2023).  Survivor-victim perspectives on the possibility of restorative justice conferencing after sexual assault. International Journal of Restorative Justice 6, 7-28. https://doi.org/10.5553/IJRJ.000024

8. White, J. W., & Koss, M. P. (2024). Using research to recalibrate the Violence Against Women Act initiatives for sexual exploitation response. Psychology of Violence, 14(6), , 386-395. https://doi.org/10.1037/vio0000456

9. Lopez, E. C., & Koss, M. P. (2024). Comment on Porat et al.(2024): Preventing sexual violence: A behavioral problem without a behaviorally informed solution”. Psychological science in the public interest, 25(1), 1-3. https://doi.org/10.1177/15291006241238640

10. Davis, K. C., Koss, M. P., Lopez, E. C., & Roberts, K. (2024). Safer Bars: A cluster-randomized effectiveness evaluation of alcohol-related sexual violence prevention through bar staff bystander training. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 140, 107488. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cct.2024.107488

11. McGray, T. L., Hutton, B., Dodge, B., & Koss, M. P. (2024). Effects of social support interventions on LGBTQ+ survivor-victims of Intimate Partner Violence: a systematic review. Sexual and Gender Diversity in Social Services, 1-33. (DOI not available yet)

12. Anderson, R. E., Peterson, Z. D., Koss, M. P., Abbey, A., Orchowski, L., Thompson, M. P., ... & Littleton, H. L. (2024). Preliminary evidence of validity for the verbally pressured and illegal sexual exploitation modules of the Sexual Experiences Survey-Victimization. The Journal of Sex Research, 61(6), 922-935. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2024.2358416

13. Roberts, K., Davis, K. C., Koss, M. P., & Lopez, E. C. (2024). Feasibility and acceptability of a bar-staff bystander intervention training program for Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 85(1), 147–156. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsad.24-00085

 

Podcasts

Koss, M.P.  (July 29, 2022).  Alcohol is becoming more common in sexual assault among college students. The Academic Minute https://academicminute.org/2022/07/mary-koss-university-of-arizona-alcohol-and-sexual-assault-on-college-campuses

Koss, M.P.  (July 29, 2022).  Alcohol is becoming more common in sexual assault among college students. The Academic Minute https://academicminute.org/2022/07/mary-koss-university-of-arizona-alcohol-and-sexual-assault-on-college-campuses

This American Life (Episode 770, May 6, 2022) My lying eyes:  People staring squarely at the truth and still finding it hard to believe what they’re seeing (National Public Radio for broadcast and placement in the National Archives, Washington, DC. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/770/my-lying-eyes