Prevention of Sexual Violence: A Preliminary Investigation of the Effect of Living on or Off-Campus

Background: Sexual violence (SV) affects 20 to 25% of young women by the time they finish college (Koss, Gidycz, & Wisniewski, 1987). Within prevention research, there is a gap in understanding how efforts should be modified for differing audiences, including students who reside on versus off campus. Social workers have the potential to play a critical role in the development, implementation, and evaluation of primary prevention efforts to address SV for all students.

Methods: This study was conducted as part of a larger campus climate assessment of SV on the campus of a large, public Northeastern university. The study included a census survey examining SV rates for students, knowledge of resources related to sexual assault, and other measure associated with SV prevention efforts.

The current analysis utilized data from undergraduate and graduate students who were enrolled in the institution at the time the online, anonymous survey was administered in 2014 (N=10,749). More than half of the students (53%, n=5,736) lived off-campus while the remaining students (47%, n=5,011) lived on-campus.

A series of t-tests were conducted comparing those students who lived on-campus to those living off-campus. The dependent variables for these tests were measures dealing with SV prevention including: 1) students’ Sense of Community; 2) participants’ perception of how the university would respond to an incident such as crises or other unspecified incidents (University Responsiveness); 3) participants’ perceptions of how the university would handle a report of SV (University Handling of Sexual Assault); 4) participants’ confidence in seeking help; 5) awareness of the various university department’s resources); 6) the extent to which participants think SV is a problem at the university and their readiness to help; and 7) participants’ exposure to information about SV on campus (Level of Exposure).

Results: The t-tests for all seven dependent measures were significant (p=.000) with students living on-campus having higher mean scores on all scales. Students living on-campus, as compared to those living off-campus, had significantly higher mean scores on the Sense of Community, University Responsiveness, University Handling of Sexual Assault, Confidence in Seeking Help, Awareness of Resources, and Level of Exposure scales. The Readiness to Help scale has three subscales indicating if students are 1) ready to take action, 2) taking responsibility, or 3) have no awareness of the issues. Students living on-campus had higher mean scores for the first two subscales (indicating a positive responses) and lower scores on the no awareness subscale indicating they had greater awareness of SV than those living off-campus.

Implications: As national experts in SV prevention have called for research on modifiers of prevention, this study indicates that young adult students living on and off-campus differ in terms of number of measures related to SV prevention. Social workers implementing or designing SV prevention strategies, may consider more intensive programming for students living off-campus.  

Koss, M.P., Gidycz, C.A., Wisniewski, N. (1987). The Scope of Rape: Incidence and Prevalence of Sexual Aggression and victimization in a National Sample of Higher Education Students. Journal of Counseling and Clinical Psychology; 55(2): 162−70.