NCJ Number
163369
Journal
Violence and Victims Volume: 11 Issue: 1 Dated: (Spring 1996) Pages: 3-19
Date Published
1996
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study supports the hypothesis that certain personal characteristics put youths at risk of victimization, not through any lifestyle or routine-activity mechanism, but by making certain youths more "congruent" with the needs, motives, or reactions of potential offenders.
Abstract
Three specific types of such characteristics are those that increase the potential victim's "target vulnerability" (e.g., physical weakness or psychological distress), "target gratifiability" (e.g., female gender for the crime of sexual assault), or "target antagonism" (e.g., behaviors or ethnic/group identities that may spark hostility or resentment). The study that tested this hypothesis used data from the National Youth Victimization Prevention Study (Finkelhor and Dziuba-Leatherman, 1994b), a two-wave random digit dial telephone survey of youths and their caretakers that examined the exposure to and impact of victimization prevention education programs. Variables within the study were selected to represent all of the major concepts at issue, including the lifestyle concepts of proximity, exposure, and guardianship and the target-congruence concepts of vulnerability, gratifiability, and antagonism. Data analyses show that target-congruence variables made a significant contribution to victimization risk over and above lifestyle variables alone in predicting nonfamilial, sexual, and parental assault. 5 tables and 29 references