Exploring the Connection Between Food Insecurity and Sexual Victimization Among College Students

ABSTRACT

A small body of research has identified a positive relationship between food insecurity and victimization risk, including intimate partner violence and sexual violence victimization as well as experiencing and witnessing childhood violence in the home. The question remains whether food insecurity is related to sexual victimization among college students, and if so, what mechanisms link the two. We use data from the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment, a national sample of college students, to investigate these relationships. We find that low and very low food security increases the odds of sexual victimization, and that both are tied to increased odds of experiencing moderate to severe stress, depression, anxiety, binge drinking, and drug use. Institutions of higher learning may benefit from programs to address food insecurity. Doing so may have the corollary benefit of influencing mental health and health risk behaviors in ways that could reduce sexual victimization.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual victimization
• food insecurity
• college students
• stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Respondents were asked to write in their identification if they selected the other category. Those who wrote an option that fit into one of the noted categories were coded as such, and those who were not clearly identifiable as one of these groups but noted a racial/ethnic/national group (e.g., German) were coded as Other. Those who did not wish to indicate or wrote in something nonsensical or nonidentifiable were coded as missing.

2. Persons who wrote in a response that matched one of these categories when selecting “Other” were coded accordingly or in the Other category. Those who wrote in a response that was nonsensical or nonidentifiable were coded as missing. Those who wrote in a response that indicated cisgender were coded according to their response on the biological sex variable (e.g., those who indicated being cisgender and female at birth were coded as woman or female on the gender identity variable).

3. Those who wrote in a response when selecting other who identified one of the categories present in this study were coded as that category. Those who wrote in a response that was determined to be made up or noninterpretable (e.g., hopeless) or who chose not to answer were coded as missing.

4. When using a Bonferroni correction for planned comparisons for the effect between food security and the mediators, all significant findings remain (adjusted p-value =.004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leah E. Daigle

Dr. Leah E. Daigle is Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. Her most recent research has centered on recurring victimization, sexual victimization of college women, and the development and continuation of victimization across the life course. She is coauthor of Criminals in the Making: Criminality Across the Life Course (2nd ed.) and Unsafe in the Ivory Tower: The Sexual Victimization of College Women, which was awarded the 2011 Outstanding Book Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and author of Victimology: A Text/Reader (2nd ed.) and Victimology: The Essentials (2nd ed.). She was awarded the 2014 Andrew Young School of Policy of Studies Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2020 Division of Victimology of the American Society of Criminology Bonnie S. Fisher Victimology Career Award.

Raven B. Muñoz

Raven B. Muñoz is a Ph.D student in the Georgia State University department of criminal justice and criminology. Her research interests are sexual violence, victimization, and sexual violence prevention efforts.

Katelyn P. Hancock

Katelyn P. Hancock, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the Department of Social, Cultural, and Justice Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Her research interests are victimization of diverse groups, polyvictimization, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence. Her most recent publications appear in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, American Journal of Criminal Justice, and the Journal of Criminal Justice Education. She was the recipient of the 2020 Graduate Student Leadership Award and the 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. She is an Academy of Criminal Justice Science’s Doctoral Summit Fellow, and she received the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award for 2022 from the Southern Criminal Justice Association.