142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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312501
Language of Sexual Aggression Online: Implications for Future Intimate Partner Violence Research Among Older Adult Women

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Carla L. VandeWeerd, PhD , Department of Community and Family Health, University of South Florida, College of Public Health, Tampa, FL
Dana Goodlett, BA , Department of Community and Family Health, University of South Florida, College of Public Health, Department of Community and Family Health, Tampa, FL
Jaime L. Myers, MPH, CHES , Department of Community and Family Health, University of South Florida, College of Public Health, Tampa, FL
Jaime Corvin, PhD, MSPH , Global Health, Univeristy of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Martha L. Coulter, DrPH MPH MSW , Department of Community and Family Health, University of South Florida, College of Public Health, Tampa, FL
Elizabeth Perkins, PhD., RNMH , Florida Center for Inclusive Communities; Department of Child and Family Studies, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Bonnie L. Yegidis, MSW, PhD , School of Social Work, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
Ali Yalcin, Ph.D. , Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering, University of South Florida
Background:  

Research among adolescents indicates that communication patterns online often involve increased levels of sexual aggression when compared to face-to-face communications; however, little is known about this phenomena among older adults. As seniors are a growing demographic to online dating, this study seeks to understand the terminology senior women use to explain online verbal sexual aggression and to discuss implications for future research. 

Methods: 

Women ages 50+ who use the internet to meet new people (N =44) participated in semi-structured telephone interviews which were recorded, transcribed verbatim, team coded, and entered into ATLAS.TI software for thematic data analysis. 

Results: 

The majority of senior women interviewed encountered  sexual aggression on online dating sites. However when asked, "Have you ever felt threatened physically, sexually, or verbally by someone you met online?" most women replied "no" despite describing unwanted verbal sexual advances that made them feel uncomfortable and disrespected, referring to these advances using words such as, "rude," "nasty," and "bold," among other minimizing terminology.

Conclusions:

Rather than using sexual violence terminology common in the literature and amongst practitioners, senior women used alternative words  to explain unwanted verbal sexual aggression. Future research instrument development exploring this topic should consider senior women's terminology to describe unwanted sexual advances to better account for the prevalence of these experiences online.

Learning Areas:

Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Communication and informatics
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related research

Learning Objectives:
Discuss ways in which seniors use minimizing language in online dating conversations to refer to online sexual aggression. Identify strategies for collecting valid qualitative violence data based on the terminology commonly used by seniors to describe experiences with online sexual aggression.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am a graduate assistant in public health working directly under the principal investigator of multiple, large public health and interdisciplinary grants. Since last year I have become intimately acquainted with our research data and have held responsibility for qualitative data analysis and dissemination on this topic. Among my interests has been intimate partner violence, adolescent dating-violence, and gender based violence.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

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.

Back to: 4187.1: Family Violence Prevention Poster Session 2