NCJ Number
201436
Date Published
2001
Length
26 pages
Annotation
A comprehensive discussion of rape focuses on sexual violence against college-age women.
Abstract
The chapter begins with a discussion of the prevalence of rape that draws on data from contemporary national and college-based studies that have used large-scale representative sampling strategies. The Violence Against Women Survey, a nationally representative telephone poll conducted between 1995 and 1996, found that 14.8 percent of women and 2.1 percent of men reported completed rape at some time in their lives, with 54 percent of all rapes occurring before the age of 18. The 1995 National College Health Risk Behavior Survey examined the prevalence of forced sexual intercourse and health-risk behaviors among a national sample of 4,609 female college students. When the estimate was restricted to women who had been raped since the age of 15, the survey found a prevalence rate of 15 percent. The data also confirmed previously reported links between victimization and risky health behaviors that included drinking, smoking, drug use, and lack of condom use. Other prevalence studies whose results are reported are the 1998 college-based study Crime in the Ivory Tower, the U.S. Naval Recruit Health Study, and the Harvard School of Public Health College Alcohol Study. The limitations of all of these studies are discussed. The next section of the chapter focuses on risk factors for rape identified in the research. Such research has examined the complex interaction of social, cultural, situational, interpersonal, and intrapersonal factors that perpetuate sexual violence. Factors discussed are past victimization, multiple sexual partners, sexual values, and the use of alcohol. The chapter advises, however, that regardless of what researchers find about vulnerability factors, women will still be vulnerable to rape and sexual assault to the extent that men commit these acts of sexual violence. The chapter, therefore, turns to the behavior of perpetrators in an effort to inform prevention efforts. The discussion of preventive interventions addresses mixed-sex interventions, interventions with men, and interventions with women. The authors recommend that there be an increase in the number of preventive interventions that target men and incorporate content informed by theories that predict rape behavior. A table of university-based preventive interventions conducted between 1994 and 1999 and 115 references