Dr.(Prof.) Mary P Koss

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.

• Public Health Policy Leadership
• Clinical Psychology
• Sexual Violence Prevention
• Restorative Justice Conferencing
• Sexual Health Research
• Public Policy Research
• Violence Prevention Programs
• Restorative Justice
• Sexual Assault Research
• Bystander Intervention
• Sexual Exploitation
• Trauma-Informed Care
• Gender-Based Violence
• Feminist Psychology
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