Citation

Anderson RAE, Peterson ZD, Koss MP, Abbey A, Orchowski L, Thompson MP, Kowalski R, Littleton HL. J. Sex Res. 2024; 61(6): 922-935.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality)

DOI

10.1080/00224499.2024.2362264

PMID

38973058

Abstract

The Sexual Experiences Survey-Victimization (SES-V; see Koss et al., 2024) revises the prior 2007 Sexual Experiences Survey-Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV) in many ways, including expanded measurement of verbally pressured and illegal sexual exploitation, as well as the addition of items that assess being made to perform a sexual act or to penetrate another person sexually. The current article describes two initial validity studies of the SES-V. Study 1 compared rates of self-reported verbal pressure and illegal sexual exploitation (e.g. rape) on a preliminary version of the SES-V and the SES-SFV in a sample of higher education students who completed both questionnaires online in a randomized order (N = 460). As expected, the preliminary SES-V produced higher rates than the SES-SFV, and continuous scores were strongly correlated. Responses to the made-to-penetrate (MTP) items suggested that some cisgender men and women may have misunderstood those items. Study 2 explored responses to the MTP items further by randomly assigning participants to complete items with either the Study 1 MTP language (n = 269) or revised language (n = 245). The revised language produced fewer implausible responses and was adopted in the final version of the SES-V. These findings provide initial support for the validity of the SES-V and the value of expanding the conceptualization of victimization to include a wider range of sexual exploitation. A research agenda for future validity research is suggested.

Language: en

Keywords

Humans; Adult; Female; Male; Adolescent; Young Adult; Reproducibility of Results; Sex Offenses; Surveys and Questionnaires/standards; *Crime Victims