In Her Place Survey on Black Women and Policing

Primary Investigators

Shannon Malone Gonzalez, University of North Carolina, Chapel HIll; Yasmiyn Irizarry, The University of Texas at Austin

Research Team: Sidney Holland (UT Austin); Athena Owirodu (UNC).

The In Her Place Survey of Black Women and Policing was developed as a part of a larger mixed-methods project on police violence against black women and girls. The survey was administered in October 2020 by Qualtrics and includes a nationally representative sample of black women ages 18+, stratified by age and geographic region. Over 1,600 black women participated in the study. 

Survey questions covered a range of subjects related to policing, including but not limited to black women's experiences of police violence (childhood and adulthood) and the circumstances surrounding these experiences; how black women prepare for the possibility of police encounters; their opinions and views of police, police violence, and protests, as well as what we should tell black youth regarding police encounters, and social media and activism regarding police violence. The survey also includes detailed information on respondents' socioeconomic and other background characteristics; physical features; health and wellbeing; gender, sexual, and ethnic identity (self and partner); home and neighborhood characteristics; and day-to-day experiences of discrimination.

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2001338. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.