![Sample our Law journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5942/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Law.jpg"})
Abstract
Prior literature concerning stalking, particularly in the field of criminology, finds wide variation in fundamental trends regarding stalking victimization and perpetration. There seems to be little consensus regarding when and how stalking is manifested. Furthermore, prior research to date has not addressed the etiology of stalking‐related behaviors by applying principles from criminal career research, including participation, frequency, onset, and duration. The present study builds upon prior research by addressing trends in age of onset for stalking victimization and perpetration, the duration of stalking‐related behaviors, and the relationship between those behaviors and other types of crime over the life course using primary data from a sample of young adults. Findings indicate that stalking victimization and perpetration share important career attribute similarities, and that self‐reported history of intimate partner violence and sexual assault are strongly associated with stalking outcomes.
Notes
1. California was the first state to recognize stalking as a crime. By 1995, all 50 states and the District of Columbia followed suit and implemented anti‐stalking legislation.
2. The NVAWS rates of stalking victimization are dependent upon the definition of stalking used. The more stringent definition (requiring the victim to feel a great amount of fear) is associated with a lower prevalence rate for both men (2%) and women (8%) whereas the broader definition of stalking (requiring the victim to feel somewhat fearful) yields higher victimization rates for both males (4%) and females (12%).
3. Research regarding web‐based response rates indicates substantially lower rates than for other traditional methods of survey distribution (Couper, Citation2000). Couper (Citation2000, p. 484) explains that some web‐based surveys obtain less than a 10% response rate for “single invitation surveys.” Despite the relatively low response rate of the current study, the composition of survey respondents closely resembles the overall university population. For example, the entire university population is comprised of 53% females and 65% of the university population is White, 8% Black, 7% Asian, and the remaining 20% represent other races.
4. Survey items are available upon request from the authors.
5. Given the definition of stalking, behaviors must occur at least twice. A frightening, threatening, intrusive and harassing behavior occurring only once cannot be considered stalking.
6. The “more severe” contact behaviors included being “followed, watched, or spied on you,” “stood outside your home, school, or workplace,” “showed up at places uninvited,” and “vandalized your property or destroyed something you loved.”
7. The “less severe” behaviors included distal behaviors such as “Sent you unsolicited letters, written correspondence, or unwanted emails,” “Made unwanted phone calls to you,” “Left unwanted messages for you,” “Left unwanted items for you to find,” “Tried to communicate with you in other ways against your will,” “Sent unwanted messages electronically,” and ‘Posted unwanted messages/pictures to internet websites.”
8. Despite repeated efforts to locate a “model” weight derivation from extant research, we were unable to find a comparable technique that incorporated all of the key behavioral frequencies, episodic duration, and categorical distinctions necessary for our calculation. Thus, the “more severe” behaviors were weighted three times heavier than the “less severe” behaviors in our equation. No attempt is made to distinguish different weights for individual stalking behaviors. As noted later, we consider this to be an exploratory method of quantifying stalking seriousness and encourage refinement in subsequent research.
9. Standard diagnostics (bivariate correlations and variance inflation factors) indicated no collinearity problems among any of the variables used in the multivariate analyses.
10. Following the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer, we also estimated a second supplemental regression model with stalking perpetration seriousness as the dependent variable. In this model, none of the factors were significantly associated with stalking perpetration seriousness. These results indicate that, contrary to findings from the larger stalking literature, “traditional” factors associated with stalking perpetration (including gender) do not appear to have a statistically significant relationship to more serious stalking perpetration in this sample.