Sexual Assault Resource Availability on Texas Higher Education Campuses: A Web Site Content Analysis

Abstract

Sexual assault prevention and response remains a high priority for U.S. higher education institutions. Indeed, federal legislation and a recent White House task force have reiterated the importance of protecting college students from victimization during their tenure in postsecondary education. Informed by Eisenberg, Lechner, Frerich, Lust, and Garcia's (2012) content analysis, the current study uses a modified College Resources and Sexual Health (CRaSH) inventory to examine the status of 74 Uniform Crime Reports–reporting higher education institutions in Texas. Doing so assesses prevention, resources, response, and aftercare for victims of sexual assault. Findings demonstrate a primary reliance on target-hardening strategies, health clinics, and law enforcement responses, often to the neglect of advocacy, crisis intervention, and educational programs. Directions for research are discussed, and best practices in programming implementation to augment existing strategies are suggested.

Keywords:

• college campus resources
• sexual assault
• violence against women

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A prior version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, March 2013, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Notes

The inventory contained 53 questions related to a broad array of sexual health services and was divided into 10 categories representing clinics, safe sex, sexual health information, communication of campus resources, sexual violence resources, LGBT resources, other resources, and community atmosphere.

SPSS Version 20.0 was used to analyze the data. For each multi-item independent variable, summary scores were developed (DeVellis, 2003). Construction of scales employed principal components rotation. Prior to estimating the multivariate models, we screened the data for skewness and kurtosis. Estimates fell within the acceptable range and did not exceed the recommended cutoff values of 3.0 and 8.0, respectively (Kline, 2005).