Campus Sexual Assault Research Articles

A Face-to-Face Approach to Preventing Campus Sexual Assault

A Face-to-Face Approach to Preventing Campus Sexual Assault

Factors of Institutional Betrayal Associated with PTSD Symptoms and Barriers to Service Use Among Campus Sexual Assault Survivors

Factors of Institutional Betrayal Associated with PTSD Symptoms and Barriers to Service Use Among Campus Sexual Assault Survivors

Detrimental to Our Digital Well-Being: Campus Sexual Misconduct and Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence Among University Students in Singapore.

Although increasingly prevalent in Singapore, campus sexual assault and harassment and technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV) remain underresearched. Conducted by scholars across social work, gender studies, policy studies, communication, and computer science, this interdisciplinary study explores the impact of technologies such as social media and online platforms on the digital well-being of university students in Singapore who experience TFSV and campus sexual misconduct. We conducted online surveys with 314 students and interviews with 28 students, the majority of whom were women and identified as victim-survivors. Our analysis revealed participants did not perceive technologies as entirely detrimental and possessed limited awareness of digital well-being. These findings contribute to understanding young victim-survivors' digital well-being and relationship to technology in Singapore by highlighting the experiences of college students.

Focusing on men in campus sexual assault prevention education pays dividends

As the academic year begins and campuses enter the “Red Zone” — the time of year between orientation and Thanksgiving break when on‐campus sexual assault rates are most likely to spike — recent research points to the benefit of educating men specifically on campus sexual assault.

Litigation politics: social movement activity in campus sexual assault litigation

AbstractCritics point to increasing private lawsuits filed by students accused of campus sexual assault as evidence that Obama-era Title IX guidance overcorrected and favored victims at the expense of the due process rights of the accused. This overcorrection narrative powerfully reshaped the debate surrounding campus sexual assault and ultimately contributed to the rescinding of the guidance. Existing analytical tools from legal mobilization scholarship – emphasizing the deployment of litigation by social movement actors – are not equipped to identify the origins and dissemination of this political narrative. Drawing from legal complaints, media coverage and interviews with lawyers, we show how private practice attorneys with no visible movement ties helped craft the overcorrection narrative from individual lawsuits by (1) embedding political claims in legal filings, (2) amplifying the narrative in media and (3) collaborating with advocates in quantifying the litigation trend. We extend prior scholarship and illustrate how lawsuits can be both a vehicle of political storytelling and the story itself. We further argue that the ideology of liberal legalism can mask the politics of private lawsuits, making litigation a useful tool for social movement efforts to mobilize support for legal reform.

Toward a More Gender-Inclusive Sexual Experiences Survey: Development and Preliminary Validation With Transgender and Gender-Expansive Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault

Toward a More Gender-Inclusive Sexual Experiences Survey: Development and Preliminary Validation With Transgender and Gender-Expansive Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault

“My Life is Controlled by a Lingering Thought in My Head That it Could Happen Anytime”: How Women Navigate Fear of Sexual Violence on Campus

The problem of sexual violence on college campuses is a substantial one. While statistics vary on the prevalence of campus sexual assault (CSA), the evidence suggests an epidemic level of sexual violence in the United States’ colleges and universities. For women of traditional college age (18–25), experts estimate 20–25% of women will be sexually assaulted during their time in college. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how the fear of sexual violence shaped woman-identified individuals’ experiences in higher education. Drawing from a power-conscious approach to understanding sexual violence within college and university contexts, this study found that the fear of sexual violence was a looming presence in participants’ everyday lives. Participants discussed feeling a burden to protect themselves from sexual violence as well as feelings of powerlessness to prevent it if their safety precautions fail. Implications for practice discuss the importance of taking a power-conscious approach to addressing sexual violence on campus.

Facing Campus Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence with Courage: A Guide for Institutions and Clinicians on Prevention, Support, and Healing.

Facing Campus Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence with Courage: A Guide for Institutions and Clinicians on Prevention, Support, and Healing.

Student Perceptions of Reproductive Health Consequences Resulting from Rape

Persistently high rates of campus rape combined with changing legal landscapes surrounding reproductive health make student perceptions of the reproductive health consequences resulting from rape an important topic of research. In this study, we analyze student perceptions of a hypothetical campus rape in which a victim experiences no medical consequences, becomes pregnant, or contracts a sexually transmitted infection (STI) as a result of rape. Students in the sample recommended consistently severe punishment for the perpetrator across all three experimental conditions but viewed victim guilt and responsibility to be greatest for the rape resulting in pregnancy and least for the rape resulting in an STI. Qualitatively, students voiced strong sympathy for the victim due to the STI, yet rarely discussed the impact of pregnancy. We recommend that future research investigate the perceptions, prevalence, and consequences of reproductive health outcomes resulting from campus rape and suggest a reproductive justice framework for doing so.

“It’s Not Like I Wanted Him Kicked Off the Football Team”: Alternative Approaches to Justice and Campus Sexual Assault

Current Title IX policy focuses strictly on adjudication and punishment for sexual assault on college campuses. Yet, the possibility of alternative forms of justice has long been a point of debate, with recent policy changes allowing for university choice in the application of transformative and restorative justice practices. The following study, using qualitative interviews with 23 student survivors from two universities, finds that student survivors of campus sexual assault were not focused on punishment as a remedy for their victimization. Instead, students discussed a desire to be heard, have their victimization recognized, and the creation of survivor-centered resources focused on healing and resiliency. Opportunities for alternative forms of justice that increase healing and help seeking among student survivors are discussed.

Campus Sexual Violence and the Cost of Protecting Institutions: Carceral Systems and Trans Student Experience

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) students on university campuses experience high rates of sexual violence relative to their cisgender peers and are less likely to utilize campus resources. Despite this, TGD students’ voices are often left out of conversations about campus sexual violence. To learn about TGD students’ experiences of university sexual violence prevention and response infrastructure, we conducted focus groups with 21 TGD students at a large university in the northeastern United States. Informed by abolition feminism and critical trans politics, we undertook this thematic analysis to examine the limits of current systems to respond to TGD students’ needs and reduce their victimization. Our findings highlight how carceral logic contributes to TGD students’ exclusion from and distrust of university systems to address sexual violence. Further, our findings illustrate how TGD students’ visions for healing-oriented approaches to sexual violence on campuses align with transformative justice principles. These findings suggest that feminist social work must support the development of campus sexual violence prevention and response infrastructure that moves away from a reliance on carceral logic and toward approaches developed by community-led transformative justice organizations to inform inclusive, intersectional, campus sexual violence prevention and response efforts.

Developing and implementing survivor-centred approaches for college student-athletes: perspectives from athletic department, Title IX, and campus advocacy personnel

ABSTRACT Background: Sexual violence (SV) is a persistent issue on US college campuses, particularly among college student-athletes. Strategies to address SV are urgently needed. Yet, prior research shows that many university practices can be more harmful than helpful to SV survivors and necessitates a reimagination of how institutions support SV survivors. Survivor-centred approaches may be one way to effectively address SV for students, including student-athletes, across college campuses. Objective: This qualitative study explored campus personnel experiences with and perceptions of survivor-centred SV prevention and intervention policies and practices on college campuses and examined how these approaches serve SV survivors, including college student-athletes. Methods: As part of a larger study on campus SV and student-athletes across four institutions, semi-structured interviews with 22 representatives from athletic departments, campus advocacy, and Title IX were conducted. Guided by phenomenology, a thematic analysis approach was used to identify key patterns in survivor-centred SV prevention and intervention policies and practices. Participant demographic data were analysed descriptively. Results: Most participants identified as white (72.2%), heterosexual (63.6%), women (68.2%), and were an average of 41.8 years old (SD = 10.2). The majority were in positions associated with athletic departments (63.6%), and they had been in their role for an average of 5.6 years (SD = 6.6). Through thematic analysis, three main themes were identified: (1) education & accessibility; (2) interpersonal relationships & individual well-being; and (3) campus and societal norms. Conclusions: The findings from this study highlight clear policy and practice recommendations for survivor-centred SV prevention and intervention on college campuses, such as accessible, applicable SV training and the implementation of survivor-centred approaches. Further research is needed to understand existing survivor-centred practices and the facilitators and barriers to their implementation across institutions and within athletic departments.

Due Process and Unintended Consequences: Contradictions Between Campus Sexual Assault Support Services Create Barriers for Service Delivery

ABSTRACT Changes in Title IX policy feature questions about due process and procedures, however campus response to sexual violence includes a wide array of support professionals each with their own guiding principle, or institutional logic. Building on prior research identifying contradictions between service professionals and the theory of institutional logics, this study draws on a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with service professionals from two universities to further examine the root of these contradictions that restrict vital services to student victims. Findings highlight how the Title IX logic of due process operates as a limit on confidentiality becoming a harmful contradiction to other units’ logics. Strategies to resolve contradictory logics that limit service provision for students through Title IX policy are discussed.

When and how many: Factors associated with campus sexual assault reforms

AbstractInstitutions of higher education have faced increasing pressure to comply with federal regulations and reform their response to campus sexual assault. This study explores institutions of higher education employees’ perceptions on whether decoupling, or organizational resistance to change, is associated with the number and timing of campus sexual assault reforms adopted. Early captured reforms instituted before the “Dear Colleague Letter” in 2011, mid included reforms instituted after the Dear Colleague Letter in 2011 but before the 2015–2016 academic year and during the period of heightened attention to campus sexual assault, and late which included reforms instituted during or after the 2015–2016 academic year. A web‐based survey of institutions of higher education employees familiar with sexual assault policy implementation on their campuses asked about types of reforms, timing, decoupling, and campus characteristics. Correlations and t‐tests were run to examine the types of reforms across time periods, and regression assessed the degree to which decoupling was associated with the number and timing of reforms. Higher decoupling was associated with fewer reforms in the early period and more in the late period, though not with the overall number of reforms adopted. Findings highlight the importance of understanding factors that influence change on campuses.

Reluctance to Make a “Blind Faith Jump”: LGBTQ+ College Students’ Perspectives on Allies’ Barriers to Preventing Sexual Assault

ABSTRACT Campus sexual assault is a significant problem across the United States, and research has indicated LGBTQ+ students are at a greater risk of victimization than their straight-cisgender peers. Furthermore, LGBTQ+ students face unique barriers to help-seeking following an assault, including fear of stigmatizing the LGBTQ+ community. We propose that straight-cisgender allies may act as vigilant bystanders who notice signs of sexual assault and offer assistance to prevent assault from happening to LGBTQ+ students and/or to offer support after an assault occurs. Yet, research on the role of bystanders in preventing and alleviating sexual assault has largely overlooked experiences and perspectives of LGBTQ+ students. In this study, we explored LGBTQ+ students’ perceptions of the roles straight-cisgender allies may play in alleviating the problem of sexual assault of LGBTQ+ students. We conducted group interviews with 30 LGBTQ+ college students from 19 campuses across the United States, paying attention to what they perceived as barriers to allies’ help. Findings illustrate ways that boundaries between LGBTQ+ insiders and outsiders can leave both groups reluctant to make a “blind faith jump” to seek or offer help. We propose suggestions for how sexual assault prevention programming may bridge this gap between LGBTQ+ students and straight-cisgender allies.

‘Holding on’ in a crisis: theorising campus sexual violence activism within precarious labour relations

A ‘rape crisis’ has been identified in universities in the Anglophone North, and responses usually take the form of institutional discipline and governance despite well-established assessments of the failings of both carceral and procedural approaches. In these responses, institutional reputation and risk management overdetermines, elevates and captures particular types of white feminist activism. This article theorises these dynamics, using precarity as a lens on the relations within which campus sexual violence is addressed. I trace the material connections between sexual violence and precarious labour, and the intersecting narratives of crisis focused on both issues in contemporary higher education, which reflect ‘genres of crisis’ in the wider politico-cultural sphere. In this context, persistent attachments to discipline and governance within the campus sexual violence movement can be theorised at least partly as a political flight from vulnerability, a ‘holding on’ to whatever one can find, that is ripe for exploitation by liability-focused institutional agendas. Such procedural enactments of security are possible because bureaucracy is the institutional ‘water in which we swim’, which creates a strong impetus to reduce politics to paperwork relations. This is especially manifest in risk-averse and compliance-driven ‘safeguarding’ modalities, securitarian regimes that serve mainly to interpellate the dangerous Other and safeguard the institution. I argue for the cultivation of more susceptible relations which are difficult to achieve within disembodied bureaucratic codes and which require a retreat from both narratives of crisis and procedural attempts at calm.

Toward a Critical Sociology of Campus Sexual Assault: Victim Advocacy as the Lifeworld Resisting the System

As scholars, practitioners and activists continue to strive to better understand, prevent and respond to campus sexual assault, we need stronger conceptual frameworks that provide insight into both causes and potential solutions. In this article, I propose a critical sociology of campus sexual assault, informed by Jürgen Habermas’s and Dorothy Smith’s work, and illustrated through data from interviews with campus sexual assault victim advocates. Specifically, I examine how understanding policies and practices operating primarily through the system versus the lifeworld can help us to identify those that serve institutions versus those that serve survivors. I argue further that policies and practices that prioritize consensus, self-articulation, and care—those that promote a particular understanding of the “lifeworld”—can help us to resist systemic oppression that contributes to the problem of campus sexual assault, potentially strengthening our response to this problem. I argue that our best hope for more effective efforts to reduce and ultimately eliminate campus sexual assault requires collaboration among academics, activists and advocates who center the experiences of survivors, in the spirit of critical theory’s insistence on the active participation of citizens in their own emancipation from oppressive systems.

Precollege Risk Markers for College Rape and Verbal Sexual Coercion: Same or Different?

Verbal sexual coercion (VSC) and rape are common experiences among college women. Although they have been theorized to involve different risk markers, few prospective studies have examined predictors of VSC and rape separately. The present prospective study was designed to identify precollege risk markers for VSC and rape in first-year college women, with the goal of considering the degree to which they overlap or differ. Women (N = 449) recruited from the community just prior to high school graduation completed measures of sexual victimization (SV) since age 14 but prior to college, sexual refusal assertiveness, high school heavy episodic drinking (HED), college drinking intentions, and sociosexuality. Follow-up surveys at the end of the first and second college semesters assessed VSC and rape. Using the Sexual Experiences Survey's severity scoring method, women were classified into one of three groups according to the most severe type of SV reported in the first year of college: neither VSC nor rape (71%), VSC (16%), and rape (13%). Most women who experienced rape (73%) also experienced VSC. Precollege SV and college drinking intentions predicted both rape and VSC. Sexual refusal assertiveness and high school HED did not independently predict either form of victimization. Sociosexuality predicted rape but not VSC. Findings suggest a substantial overlap in the predictors of VSC and rape and support the severity continuum underlying many conceptualizations of SV.

A latent class analysis of campus sexual assault.

Campus sexual assault (CSA) is a pervasive problem among U.S. college students. Large-scale studies frequently find that between 20%-25% of women and 6%-7% of men are sexually victimized during their time at U.S. colleges and universities (Cantor et al., 2015, 2019; Fisher et al., 2000; Krebs et al., 2007; Krebs et al., 2010). The purpose of the present study is to examine individual responses to campus climate surveys in an effort to determine how students perceive their risk of being sexually assaulted and how they interact with campus policies. The present study addresses the research gap by utilizing latent class analysis with campus climate survey data in order to identify subgroups of students based on their responses to elements of campus climate. Climate in this context is measured by the perceptions of campus constituencies and the policies of institutions of higher education. Additionally, the present study seeks to determine if latent subgroups could be predicted by victimization and gender. Results provided evidence for the existence of latent subgroups of students on elements of campus climate, and supported the hypothesis that latent class membership could be predicted by victimization status and gender. Implications of the present study may help institutions of higher education identify students who would benefit from focused outreach efforts to improve safety based on class membership. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Drinking, Diversity, and Discrimination: Campus-Level Factors that Influence Students' Risk of Experiencing Sexual Assault.

College students' individual-level risk factors for sexual assault victimization have been studied for decades, but fewer studies have looked at whether and how campus-level factors, such as campus-level rates of discrimination and campus diversity, might also influence student victimization risk. Identifying these broader factors can inform efforts to develop more effective campus-level sexual assault preventive interventions. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a large, multi-campus health and well-being survey (N = 309,171 students across 474 US campuses) to explore how campus-level factors shape students' risk of experiencing sexual assault after accounting for students' individual-level risk factors. Using mixed-effects logistic regression, we examined the influence of campus-level factors (e.g., campus sexual orientation demographics and gender diversity) on students' odds of experiencing sexual assault, after accounting for individual risk factors (e.g., sexual and gender minority status). Although some campus characteristics, such as enrollment size, had small significant effects on students' odds of experiencing sexual assault, we found larger significant effects from aggregated campus-level rates of binge drinking, campus diversity (particularly regarding sexual orientation and gender), and discrimination. These findings suggest that comprehensive campus sexual violence prevention would benefit from strategies that promote safe and inclusive campuses, especially for students with marginalized sexual and gender identities.