Defensive behaviors on college campuses: The role of fear, perceived risk, perceived motivation and past exposure to sexual victimization

Rates of sexual violence are notably high on college campuses, with an estimated one in four women being victimized throughout their college career (Fisher, Cullen and Turner 2000). Universities are coming under more and more scrutiny for how they handle cases of reported rapes or sexual assaults, however far less attention is given to the role of Universities in preventing sexual violence. This dissertation examines how college females make the decision to engage in defensive behaviors to protect themselves from sexual victimization. This is done using data collected from college aged females enrolled at a Mid-Western University (n=182). I frame this work by using the rape myth construct (Burt 1980), meaning that rapes are often thought of as incorporating physical violence in a public area with the assailant being a stranger to the victim. I use this frame to examine the effects of fear, perceived risk, perceived motivation of sexual violence and past exposure to rape or sexual assault on the likelihood of females' decision to actually engage in or consider engaging in defensive behaviors. A series of logistic regressions were utilized to see if there were relationships between these variables. Support was found for linking perceived risk and perceived motivations of power and sex to increased likelihood of actual engagement or considering engagement of defensive behaviors. These findings can be directly linked to prevention programs offered at Universities with the goal of increasing defensive behavior to prevent sexual violence.