College Student Perceptions of Rape - Does the Survivors' Gender, Ethnicity and Sexual Orientation Matter?

Background/Purpose:  National attention has more recently focused on sexual assault occurring on college and university campuses. The 2015 AAU Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct published findings regarding sexual assault prevalence rates and characteristics of sexual assault and misconduct on college and university campuses  nationwide. Studies have found that students involved in Greek life are more likely to have higher levels of rape myth acceptance than those who are not involved in Greek life.  However, studies have not focused on how undergraduate students perceive rape based on the gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation of the survivor. Previous studies regarding individuals’ perceptions of rape have been limited to that of heterosexual couples and did not focus on whether the ethnicity or sexual orientation of the survivor affects perceptions of rape. This study examined whether students’ perceptions of rape were influenced by the survivors’ gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

Methods:  Data were collected from an anonymous Qualtrics survey consisting of 162 undergraduate students recruited from a public university in the United States. These measurements were modified from the study conducted by Ben-David and Schneider (2005).  The study included four rape vignette scenarios, where each rape scenario provided differed by the rape survivors’ individual characteristics. The four vignettes in the study consisted of a Latinx heterosexual and a Latinx gay couple and a white heterosexual and a white gay couple. Following the vignettes, participants were asked the extent to which they agreed with five accompanying statements (on a 5 point- Likert Scale, measuring victim-blaming, perpetrator accountability, and the perception of rape. Descriptive and t-test analyses were conducted to analyze gender differences in victim-blaming, perpetrator accountability, and whether the incident should be categorized as rape.

Results:  Overall, students were least likely to agree that the rape of the gay Latino male should be reported to authorities. It was found that there while there were low levels of victim-blaming, students were not as likely to hold the perpetrator accountable for his actions. There were significant differences found among the four groups. There were significant differences between white heterosexual and white gay participants for victim-blaming, t(221.81) = 3.46; p=0.00.  Other significant differences were also found among groups.

Conclusion/Implications: Students generally did not victim-blame the rape survivor, yet were not as strong in their agreement that the perpetrator should be held accountable for his actions.  Levels of victim-blaming and perpetrator accountability differed based on ethnic and sexual orientation survivor characteristics, indicating that students do make judgements based off individual characteristics. These results may help campuses begin to gain an understanding of the extent to which racism, sexism, and homophobia may influence how undergraduate students are judged when they report being sexually assaulted. These findings may lend additional insight to how college and university campuses can better assist sexual assault and rape survivors who report being sexually assaulted or raped to campus reporting authorities.