Citation

Anderson RAE, Cahill SP, Delahanty DL. Psychol. Violence 2019; 9(4): 481-489.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/vio0000199

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Sexual victimization affects at least 1 in 5 college women and up to 1 in 6 college men; however, the exact rates of sexual perpetration are difficult to ascertain because of inconsistencies in the measurement of these behaviors. The present study is the first to evaluate the extent to which 3 commonly used measures of sexual violence (Sexual Experiences Survey--Short Form Victimization, Sexual Experiences Survey--Short Form Perpetration, and Revised Conflicts Tactics Scales--Sexual Coercion subscale [CTS2-SC]) concurred in identifying cases of sexual victimization and sexual perpetration. This is the first study to simultaneously examine victimization and perpetration, provide kappa estimates of discordance, and control for order of survey administration effects.

METHOD: Undergraduate men (N = 397) completed the study measures in a randomized order.

RESULTS: The Sexual Experiences Survey--Short Form Victimization identified 109 cases of sexual victimization (27.5% of the sample), whereas the CTS2-SC identified 164 cases (41.3% of the sample).

RESULTS were similar for sexual perpetration. There was no effect of the order of administration on sexual victimization reports. However, there was an order effect for sexual perpetration. When the CTS2-SC was administered first, response rates on the CTS2-SC were higher.

CONCLUSIONS: These results highlight the lack of precision in the measurement of sexual violence. Conceptually, the Sexual Experiences Surveys should identify a greater number of cases; yet, we consistently found that the CTS2-SC identified more cases of sexual violence. We suggest that differences in the instructional cues, internal item structure, and measure structure may account for these differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)

Language: en