Sarah Ullman

Dr. Sarah Ullman is Professor of Criminology, Law, &; Justice and Affiliate Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a social psychologist whose research concerns the impact of sexual assault and traumatic life events on women’s health and substance abuse outcomes and rape avoidance/prevention. She has received funding from the NIMH, NIAAA, and foundations for her research. She has conducted NIH-funded longitudinal studies of risk and protective factors for PTSD and substance abuse and other health-related outcomes in rape victims, was Co-investigator on an NIH grant to evaluate a social support network intervention for rape victims and their informal support networks and is currently conducting an NIH funded study of rape victims and their informal support network members. Dr. Ullman has published extensively about sexual assault, including the 2nd edition of her research monograph entitled Talking About Sexual Assault: Society’s Response to Survivors published in 2023 by the American Psychological Association. Sarah E. Ullman is Professor of Criminology, Law, & Justice, Affiliate Professor of Psychology, and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Health Research & Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago and past Director of the UIC Office of Social Science Research. She received a Ph.D. in Social/Developmental Psychology at Brandeis University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Psychology at UCLA. She is an applied social psychologist whose research concerns the impact of sexual assault and traumatic life events on women’s health and substance abuse outcomes, behavioral correlates of rape avoidance/prevention, and the role of alcohol and drug use in sexual assault outcomes. Her research interests are on violence against women, particularly sexual victimization of women in adulthood and childhood. Her work uses quantitative and qualitative methods to study risk factors for sexual victimization and the impact of rape on women’s mental and physical health including PTSD, suicidal behavior, problem drinking, and mental health services seeking. In one line of work, she examined women’s resistance strategies in rape situations and the relationship of self-defense training to women’s avoidance of rapes. She has done extensive research on the role of alcohol in sexual assault as both a risk factor for being assaulted and as an outcome of victimization. She developed a measure of social reactions to victim’s disclosures of sexual assault, now widely used in the field, the Social Reactions Questionnaire (SRQ, Ullman, 2000), as well as a short version (SRQ-S, Ullman et al., 2017), and an alcohol-specific version (SRQ-Alcohol; Relyea & Ullman, 2015). Professor Ullman has conducted survey and interview research studies on female victims with a particular focus on stress, coping, and social support processes associated with psychological adjustment outcomes. Several of her studies have examined how social reactions from formal and informal support sources affect women’s coping and recovery from sexual assault including their PTSD and substance abuse outcomes. She has also interviewed both survivors and service providers (advocates, clinicians) about their disclosure and help seeking experiences and is developing an informal support network intervention for survivors and their social network members. Her research has been funded by NIAAA, NIMH, and foundation funding, and she has reviewed grants for various federal agencies. She has conducted NIAAA-funded longitudinal studies of risk and protective factors in sexual assault survivors related to risk of revictimization, mental health, substance abuse, PTSD, and posttraumatic growth outcomes. She is currently conducting NIAAA-funded research on sexual assault survivor-informal support dyads to better understand disclosure, social support, and recovery of survivors and impacts of responding and supporting survivors of family, friends, and romantic partners. She has also collaborated on development of an informal support network intervention to improve support provider responses to sexual assault survivors. The 2nd edition of her book "Talking About Sexual Assault: Society’s Response to Survivors" was published by the American Psychological Association in 2023. Dr. Sarah E. Ullman is a distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law, & Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where she also serves as an Affiliate Professor of Psychology and Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Health Research & Policy. With a Ph.D. in Social/Developmental Psychology from Brandeis University and postdoctoral training in Health Psychology at UCLA, Dr. Ullman is an accomplished applied social psychologist whose research has profoundly shaped the field of violence against women, particularly sexual victimization and its complex aftermath. Over the course of her career, Dr. Ullman has led groundbreaking studies investigating the psychological and behavioral impact of sexual assault on women, with a focus on PTSD, substance use, problem drinking, suicidal ideation, and help-seeking behaviors. Her scholarship integrates both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies, allowing for a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted experiences of sexual assault survivors. She has made significant contributions to the literature on women’s coping and recovery processes, including how social support—both positive and negative—affects mental health outcomes. Dr. Ullman is widely recognized for developing the Social Reactions Questionnaire (SRQ), a psychometric tool used internationally to measure the nature and frequency of responses survivors receive upon disclosing their experiences of sexual assault. She later developed the SRQ-S (short version) and SRQ-Alcohol, further enhancing the utility of this measure in different contexts. Her research using these instruments has provided vital insight into how social reactions—whether supportive or harmful—influence PTSD symptoms, revictimization risk, and substance use outcomes among survivors. Her work also explores how resistance and self-defense behaviors influence women’s ability to avoid or mitigate rape, and how such strategies relate to long-term psychological outcomes. In addition, Dr. Ullman has conducted longitudinal studies funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), assessing risk and protective factors in the lives of sexual assault survivors. These studies have offered essential findings regarding revictimization, coping strategies, posttraumatic growth, and informal support systems. Currently, Dr. Ullman is engaged in NIAAA-funded research examining survivor-support dyads, seeking to understand the mutual effects of disclosure and support provision between survivors and close network members—such as family, friends, or romantic partners. This research forms the basis of her work on developing informal support network interventions, aimed at improving the ways in which survivors are received and helped by their immediate communities. Her latest book, the second edition of Talking About Sexual Assault: Society’s Response to Survivors (APA, 2023), consolidates years of empirical findings and offers a comprehensive look at how survivors are treated in both formal systems and everyday interactions. Through this work and others, Dr. Ullman remains at the forefront of research that not only deepens scholarly understanding but also drives social change and public health interventions to improve outcomes for survivors of sexual violence.