Disclosure of Sexual Victimization: A Prospective Study of Social Reactions and Subsequent Adjustment
Year: 2009
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Research examining the process of sexual assault dislcosure is typically retrospective in nature, limited in scope, and rarely targets college women.The purpose of the current research was to address these limitations by utilizing a prospective methodology to explore factors that predict sexual assault disclosure, identify the recipients of sexual assault disclosure, examine how these providers respond to dislcosure, and understand the relationship between social reactions to disclosure of sexual assault and subsequent adjustment in a sample of college women.Participants included 374 undergraduate women from a medium sized Midwestern university.Participants completed a baseline, 4-month and 7-month follow-up assessment of experiences of sexual victimization, experiences of sexual assault disclosure, social reactions to disclosure and measures of adjustment.Three studies are presented.Study 1 explored the relationship between assault characteristics, attitudes, and contextual factors and the college women's disclosure of adolescent sexual victimization, as well as sexual victimization and revictimization over a 7-month interim.A series of logistic regression analyses explored the relationship between a range of predictors and sexual assault disclosure.Whereas coping via seeking emotional support predicted adolescent sexual assault disclosure, less acquaintance with the perpetrator, victim alcohol use at the time of the assault, and perpetrator alcohol at the time of the assault, The completion of the present study was made possible through the collaboration, expertise, and support of several individuals.I would like to thank Christine A. Gidycz, advisor of the Laboratory for the Study and Prevention of Sexual Assault, for her direction and expertise.I am also grateful for the assistance of numerous members of the Laboratory for the Study and Prevention of Sexual Assault, who contributed to the process of data collection for this study.I would like to thank Jeanne A. Heaton, for her mentorship and supervision in the study of college student mental health service provision as well as clinical intervention with survivors of sexual victimization.I would like to thank Bruce Carlson for his advising in the completion of a specialization in Applied Quantitative Psychology as a part of this degree.I am also appreciative of the advising of Timothy Anderson in conceptualizing the study of sexual victimization from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives.I would also like to thank Patricia Beamish for her efforts as the Dean's Representative for this work.
Author: Lindsay M. Orchowski
Institution: Ohio University
Language: English
Subfield: Gender Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2228905665