An Assessment of College Students’ Attitudes and Empathy Toward Rape

An Assessment of College Students’ Attitudes and Empathy Toward Rape

Methods:

The study is a descriptive cross-sectional survey implemented to assess students' attitudes toward rape and empathy toward survivors of rape. A pilot study using 30 college students with a two-week interval was used to establish reliability of the ATR and RES. Subject's birth day, month, and first three digits of their phone numbers were used as identifiers for the retest portion of the pilot study. A two-tailed t test was performed comparing test scores across the 2-week interval. Statistical analysis found a 1.0 correlation for demographic data, .91 alpha reliability coefficient for the ATR, and a .80 alpha reliability coefficient for the RES. Therefore, the ATR and RES were deemed reliable for the study.

Purpose:

The purpose of this study is to assess rape attitudes and empathy levels of college students in a selected university setting in North Texas.

Sample:

A total sample of 300 subjects was needed to ensure representation within a confidence interval of 95% and .05 sampling error. The sample was drawn from the following courses: from the College of Business Administration, the course "Principles of Real Estate" provided 107 subjects; from the College of Arts and Sciences, the course "U.S. History to 1865" provided 89 students; from the College of Education, "Family Life/Human Sexuality" and "Health Emergency/First Aid" were selected, providing 110 subjects.

Hypotheses:

1. Students who either have known a rape survivor or have themselves been a survivor of rape, will express more rape-intolerant attitudes toward rape and greater empathy levels toward rape survivors than students who have not known a rape survivor or have been the survivor of a rape.

2. Students with female siblings will report more rape-intolerant attitudes toward rape and greater empathy toward rape survivors than students without female siblings.

3. Female students will have more rape-intolerant attitudes toward rape and greater empathy levels toward rape survivors than those of their male counterparts.

4. Students over the age of twenty-six will demonstrate more rape-intolerant attitudes and greater empathy levels toward rape survivors than the students under the age of twenty-six.

Variables:

The dependent variables are attitudes toward rape and empathy toward rape ...

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...homosexuals.

Implications:

In future research, it is recommended more exploration of the parameters of men's reactions to female-initiated coercion. A major question raised by this study is how forceful does a situation have to be before men respond negatively to female sexual coercion. This could be answered in a study in which the vignettes are varied by high levels of force. It is speculated that men's responses would also be influenced by sexual outcome of the situation (e.g., oral sex or intercourse) and physical appearance of the initiator (e.g., attractive or unattractive). Because the present study indicated that both men and women anticipate high psychological harm from a same-gender advance, the dynamics of these interactions should also be investigated by further vignette research.

Limitations:

The major limitation of the present study is that it assessed reactions to hypothetical coercion situations, not actual incidents. Whether victims' reactions to actual coercion will parallel findings of this study can only be determined by more research. However, the present study may serve as a source of ideas, variables and proposed relationships for future investigations.