Violent victimization and hooking up among strangers and acquaintances on an urban campus: an exploratory study

Abstract

College students anticipating a competitive labor market and arrested economic independence increasingly elect to delay romantic commitment and reproduction. Casual sexual relationships provide an alternative to the commitment required in traditional romantic relationships. Although committed and casual sexual relationships each have their benefits, both likewise have respective risks. The present exploratory study adds to the growing literature on ‘hookups’ among strangers and acquaintances by examining experiences with (a) hookups, (b) sexual violence, and (c) relationship violence in a nontraditional urban university sample. Findings from logit regression models indicate that gender, race, ethnicity, employment, relationship status, housing, class standing, psychological relationship abuse, and sexual assault by force significantly vary between students who report hooking up with strangers and acquaintances and those who do not. Gender-specific logit models find unique patterns of variables associated with hooking up. Findings are discussed with consideration of policy implications and the direction of future research.

Keywords:

• hookups
• victimization
• sexual violence
• interpersonal violence
• partner violence

Notes

1. Due to the most common type of casual sexual encounter likely occurring between friends (Armstrong et al., 2010), the term SAHU is applied to avoid confusion and precisely describe the phenomenon of interest in the current study.

2. Although the CTS2 is the most broadly used measure of partner violence, it is also routinely criticized. One major critique of the original CTS is that the measure does not account for the context of reported behaviors (Dobash & Dobash, 1979; Kurz, 1993). For example, without contextual information, some scale items could be interpreted to be behaviors observed in nonviolent relationships experiencing conflict. Straus et al. (1996) however note that scholars have obtained meaningful results using the CTS’s behavioral questions, in spite of the inability to take into account the context and meaning of reported behaviors.

3. To ensure the scale’s validity was preserved with the addition of items one through three, bivariate and multivariate models were separately specified with the psychological relationship abuse scale alternatively comprising: (1) items one through seven or (2) items four through seven, drawn from the CTS2. Bivariate and multivariate results were consistent regardless of the scale construction.

4. ‘Title IX’ refers to Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, and the ‘Clery Act’ refers to the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act of 1990.