Preferred Name

Sarah Anolik

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

ORCID

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0462-1475

Date of Graduation

5-6-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)

Department

Department of Graduate Psychology

Advisor(s)

Anne L. Stewart

Robin Anderson

Craig Shealy

Matthew Ezzell

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of many vital bystander intervention programs across the country, approximately one in four college women will experience sexual violence. Though it was once believed that a small minority of men were responsible for the vast majority of sexual violence, an estimated 12%-25% of college men report having used sexual violence as an undergraduate student. Research across disciplines suggests several factors associated with the perpetration of sexual violence. While numerous studies have explored these constructs quantitatively on and off college campuses, there have been far fewer qualitative studies that provide insight into how men who have perpetrated violence understand their own behavior, and none that have explored undergraduate men’s perspectives within the context of hookup and broader United States culture on college campuses. The purpose of the current study was to further an understanding of how heterosexual cisgender undergraduate men account for and describe sexually violent behavior, and to evaluate how these narratives correspond to the constructs heretofore identified as relevant to these behaviors, including attachment needs, gender socialization, and the influence of sociocultural context (alcohol use, hookup culture, precarious manhood). A mixed methods approach was used in order to use quantitative responses as a grouping variable to make comparisons between qualitative responses of participants with different patterns of violence use as well as comparisons between responses to quantitative and qualitative items that asked about related content. Though some of the participants’ beliefs were consistent with prior research, there were several novel themes that emerged. There were also discrepancies between how participants responded to qualitative and quantitative items, including whether participants identified their own behaviors as sexually violent. Emergent themes, as well as implications for college personnel, intervention development, clinicians, and future research are discussed.

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