The Relationship between Sexual Victimization and Year in School in U.S. Colleges: Investigating the Parameters of the “Red Zone”

It is the conventional wisdom among some universities that the highest risk of sexual assault is in the first or possibly second year in school. While initially belief in this pattern was primarily based on anecdote, recently some attempts have been made to more systematically and quantitatively test the existence of a “red zone,” a time of heightened risk of sexual assault sometime near the beginning of a female student's time at the college. However, most of these studies have been conducted with relatively small convenience samples from single schools and have had conflicting results. 

Here, I test the red zone hypothesis using self-reported sexual victimization data with a large sample (∼16,000) drawn from 22 schools as part of the Online College Social Life Survey. To investigate the specific mechanisms responsible for the red zone, I separately test for the existence of a red zone for four different types of sexual victimizations: physically forced intercourse, attempted forced intercourse, unwanted intercourse when incapacitated, and unwanted intercourse due to verbal pressure. 

Within these categories, I separately address sexual victimization that occurred while hanging out and sexual victimization during a party. Prior literature has emphasized the role of parties in the increased risk of assault for freshman. While I find some evidence for this in the higher estimates for sexual victimization at a party, the freshman effect remains for other types of sexual victimizations, suggesting that the red zone is not easily attributable to a single mechanistic cause, but to more generalizable factors. With one exception, I find that the red zone does not extend into the sophomore year.

Raw Frequencies of Sexual Victimization by School.

School	Forced, Party	Attempt Forced, Party	DFSA, Party	Verbal, Party	Forced, Hang Out	Attempted Forced, Hang Out	DFSA, Hang Out	Verbal, Hang Out
Stanford	1	7	2	2	3	5	8	7
Indiana	9	39	23	6	5	10	4	8
Arizona	6	19	10	6	7	12	10	19
Stony Brook	4	13	9	4	6	16	4	13
Ithaca	4	16	15	8	4	4	2	10
Evergreen	0	0	0	0	1	2	0	0
Santa Barbara	48	115	90	37	30	54	22	63
U Mass	40	97	62	27	32	60	23	24
Ohio State	19	27	18	4	10	15	9	20
Whitman	4	17	16	5	5	8	2	15
Foothill	9	22	24	7	20	20	17	39
Harvard	0	3	0	0	0	0	0	0
UIC	11	19	20	6	12	29	10	23
Framingham	9	12	13	6	7	21	6	18
Radford	2	3	3	1	2	2	2	4
Beloit	0	6	0	0	2	5	2	5
Riverside	3	8	8	4	5	26	6	12
UPenn	3	12	4	3	1	6	2	6
Washington	3	9	6	1	1	2	1	2
Merced	0	1	1	1	2	4	0	1
MTSU	7	7	9	5	4	12	2	13
Carroll	0	3	1	0	3	4	2	5
Total	182	455	334	133	162	317	134	307

Note. DFSA = drug- and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault; UIC = University of Illinois at Chicago; MTSU = Middle Tennessee State University.

Frequencies of Sexual Victimization by Year.

		Freshman	Sophomore	Junior +	Total
Forced, party	0	5,547	3,930	6,476	15,953
	1	118	24	40	182
	%	2.08	0.61	0.61	1.13
DFSA, party	0	5,297	3,827	6,382	15,506
	1	305	80	69	454
	%	5.44	2.05	1.07	2.84
Verbal, party	0	5,462	3,872	6,405	15,739
	1	186	62	84	332
	%	3.29	1.58	1.29	2.07
Attempt forced, party	0	5,469	3,853	6,369	15,691
	1	81	26	26	133
	%	1.46	0.67	0.41	0.84
Forced, hang out	0	5,576	3,930	6,469	15,975
	1	89	24	47	160
	%	1.57	0.61	0.72	0.99
Attempted forced, hang out	0	5,433	3,844	6,368	15,645
	1	169	63	83	315
	%	3.02	1.61	1.29	1.97
DFSA, hang out	0	5,591	3,901	6,445	15,937
	1	57	33	44	134
	%	1.01	0.84	0.68	0.83
Verbal, hang out	0	5,435	3,806	6,279	15,520
	1	115	73	116	304
	%	2.07	1.88	1.81	1.92

Note. DFSA = drug- and alcohol-facilitated sexual assault.

Full article at:   http://goo.gl/0kuiBf

By:  Stephen Cranney1

¹University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

Corresponding Author: Stephen Cranney, Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania, 239 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19143, USA, Email: ude.nnepu.sas@yennarcs

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