Discrepant Responding across Measures of College Students’ Sexual Victimization Experiences: Conceptual Replication and Extension

Abstract

Sexual violence victimization affects approximately 1 in 5 college women and 1 in 6 college men; however, rates of sexual victimization vary widely, in part due to measurement issues. The present study is the first to compare the Sexual Experiences Survey-Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV) to a measure of sexual victimization designed to capture gender differences, the Post-Refusal Sexual Persistence Scale-Victimization (PRSPS-V). Prior research has compared the perpetration versions of these questionnaires and found large discrepancies. College students (N = 673: 367 women, 298 men, 8 gender minority) were surveyed. The SES-SFV identified 260 cases of sexual victimization whereas the PRSPS-V identified 330 cases; this discrepancy was largest for men. While percent agreement between the two measures ranged from 79.9–92.0%, kappa estimates indicated that agreement was in the weak to moderate range. Kappa estimates tended to be poorer for men than women. These results highlight poor precision in the measurement of sexual violence victimization, even when using well-established measures. The PRSPS-V identified more cases and may be less gender biased. We discuss how differences in questionnaire structure, item structure, and operationalization of consent may account for discordance between the SES-SFV and PRSPS-V even when controlling for item content.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the participants who gave their time for this study.

Notes

¹ Eight men completed less than 67% of these items; when we re-ran analyses excluding these men the percentage agreement changed marginally (<.4%). We also re-ran analyses excluding any participant who had any missing data and results were consistent with those presented here.

Additional information

Funding

Dr. Anderson’s efforts were funded in part by was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 1K01AA026643-01A1. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agency.