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233530 A look at college students' personal knowledge of and attributions of blame in sexual assault: Implications for changeWednesday, November 10, 2010
: 12:30 PM - 12:50 PM
Background. Late adolescent and young adult women have the highest rates of sexual assault. Most of these assaults are by persons known to the victim. The present investigation was designed, not as a victimization survey, but to assess broader personal knowledge of and attributions of blame in sexual assault. Such information can help guide the development of population-level interventions. Methods. A stratified random sample of 1200 undergraduates was recruited for an online survey about sexual assault. The response rate was over 50%. Respondents were asked 8 standard questions about sexual assault victimization and 8 about perpetration, as well as asked to rate the amount of blame that should be assigned to a woman victim in 3 of 6 randomly assigned scenarios. Results. The most common personal knowledge of victimization (53.6%) and perpetration (41.9%) was of a woman who gave in to sex play, but not intercourse, when she didn't want to because she was overwhelmed by a man's continual arguments and pressure. The victim was blamed least when an unknown man took the woman by surprise. Victim-blame was highest when there was mutual sex play at first but the woman changed her mind and when the woman took a flirting relationship to another level by sexting (sending a text message containing a photo of the scantily clad texter). Conclusions. Information such as this is relevant to public support for policies about sexual assault, services for survivors and their networks, and, in the ultimate illustration of community norms, jury decisions.
Learning Objectives: Keywords: Sexual Assault, College Students
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Professor Sorenson conducted the first research on sexual assault ever
to be published in a public health journal. Since that initial publication in
the American Journal of Epidemiology more than 25 years ago, she has
continued conduct research on violence against women. Included in the
body of her work is an experimental vignette study in which over 3700
community-residing adults from six ethnic groups were interviewed in
four languages. Two of the multiple resulting peer-reviewed publications
are directly relevant to the new work to be presented at the 2010 APHA
convention: one is about personal knowledge of violence against women
and the other is about attributions of fault and responsibility in domestic
violence. In addition, since 1986, Prof. Sorenson has taught a course on
family and sexual violence, the first violence prevention course in a school
of public health in the nation. These qualifications suggest that Dr. Sorenson
has sufficient knowledge and skill to present her latest research, a study of
the epidemiology of personal knowledge of sexual assault among college
students and their attributions of blame. I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.
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