Degree & Year in Program
4th Year PhD Student
Advisors
Kristen Olson and Kimberly A. Tyler
Areas of Specialization
Quantitative Methods, Abuse and Victimization, Perceptions of Crime
Comprehensive Exam Area
Quantitative Methods
About me
I received my Bachelor’s degrees from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Sociology and Psychology in 2013. In 2015, I graduated from Old Dominion University (ODU) where I received Master’s in Science (MS) in Sociology with a Criminal Justice concentration. I have been at UNL since the fall of 2015 working on my doctorate, and became a PhD candidate in the spring of 2018. As my degrees demonstrate, much of my research straddles Sociology, Psychology, and Criminal Justice/Criminology.
My primary research foci are abuse, trauma, and victimization, but I have had the opportunity to work on multiple projects outside of these topics. The majority of my work at UNL has been with Dr. Kimberly Tyler on homeless youth and college students. In addition, I have worked with Dr. Lisa Kort-Butler on research about the death penalty and perceptions of crime. Following a seminar on fertility, I began work with Dr. Julia McQuillan on decisions surrounding childbearing. I am also currently the research assistant for two other projects. The first is a research team lead by Dr. Dan Hoyt on research related to homeless youth and their social networks. The second is a research team in the UNL Center for Child and Family Law (CCFL) conducting a study about private and intercountry adoption. UNL has given me the opportunity to explore my research interests and to work with a variety of professors, both within and outside of the department.
My dissertation research combines both sociological and criminal justice concepts to answer the question: how are sexually-based offenses and domestic violence incidents handled by the criminal justice system? Both of these crimes, but especially sexually-based offenses, have low reporting and arrest rates, and my dissertation aims to illuminate why that may be the case. To do this, I compare a nationally representative household survey (NCVS) and administrative data (NIBRS). Consisting of three parts, each section of my dissertation addresses a different question. First, I explore how characteristics of the victim, the offender, and the crime itself are associated with rates of reporting. Second, I look at those same characteristics to analyze arrest rates. Finally, I take the two data sets (NCVS and NIBRS) to better understand how both point estimates and the correlates of arrest differ by data type.
Upon graduation I plan to pursue a job outside of academia. Specifically, I hope to use my substantive expertise and my methodological skills to continue my work on victimization and/or interpersonal conflict at a think tank or nonprofit research agency. The Department of Sociology is collaborative in nature; this is exemplified by my experience working with a number of different teams on research projects. I look forward to continuing this kind of work post-graduation. I had an internship at NORC at the University of Chicago in the summer of 2018, and the experience really helped to clarify my goals post-graduation. Overall, I hope to focus my career on creating reliable and unbiased research about important policy topics.
Courses Taught
Instructor of Record at UNL:
SOC 311 Juvenile Delinquency, SOC 189H Social Psychology of Inequality, and multiple SOC 101 Introduction to Sociology recitations.
Teaching Assistant at UNL:
SOC 311 Juvenile Delinquency, SOC 252 Health, Medicine, and Society, SOC 863 Advanced Regression Analysis, and SOC 200 Gender in Contemporary Society.
Teaching Assistant at ODU:
Introduction to Sociology, Introduction to Marriage and the Family, Juvenile Delinquency, Sociological Theory, Sociology of Women, Internship, Capstone Research Project, Drugs and Society, and Sociology of Child Welfare.
Selected Publications
Ray, Colleen M., Sela R. Harcey, Arthur L. Greil, Stacy Tiemeyer, and Julia McQuillan. “Stability and Change in Personal Fertility Ideals among U.S. Women in Heterosexual Relationships." Demographic Research 39:459-486. https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2018.39.16.
Ray, Colleen M., Kimberly A. Tyler, and Leslie Gordon Simons. “Risk Factors for Forced, Incapacitated, and Coercive Sexual Victimization among Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Male and Female College Students.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Published online March 5, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260518758332.
Tyler, Kimberly A., Rachel M. Schmitz, and Colleen M. Ray. “Role of Social Environmental Protective Factors on Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms among Midwestern Homeless Youth.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 28(1):199-210. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.12326.
Krause-Parello, Cheryl, Michele Thames, Colleen M. Ray, and John Kolassa. “Examining the Effects of a Service-Trained Facility Dog on Stress in Children Undergoing Forensic Interview for Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse.” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 27(3):305-320. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2018.1443303.
Tyler, Kimberly A., Kristen Olson, and Colleen M. Ray. “Understanding the Link between Victimization and Alcohol Use among Homeless Youth Using Ecological Momentary Assessment.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World 4:1-6. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118779832.
Kort-Butler, Lisa and Colleen M. Ray. “Public Support for the Death Penalty in a Red State: The Distrustful, the Angry, and the Unsure.” Punishment & Society. Published online August 23, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474518795896.