Life Beyond Consequences: Exploring Drugging Victims’ Decisions to Change Lifestyles and/or Routine Activities and Subsequent Victimization Risk

• In Event: It's Not What You Think: Unpacking Drugging Victimization and Perpetration Using Different Methodologies

Abstract

Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garafalo (1978) offered the “once bitten twice shy” hypothesis, which posits that, after experiencing victimization, victims will make changes to their lifestyles to avoid subsequent victimization. Despite the apparent logic of this hypothesis, empirical tests of the hypothesis have provided mixed or weak support. The current study uses qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 52 drugging victims to explore victims’ decisions to either change their lifestyles and routine activities, or not to make any changes, as well as the relationship between their decisions and subsequent drugging victimization. We also consider the connection between perceived consequences of drugging victimization and decisions to make changes, or not. In doing so, we begin teasing out the often subtle, yet substantively meaningful, distinctions between routine activities and lifestyles, and their effect on subsequent drugging victimization risk. Our findings have implications for the refinement of measures designed to empirically test the “once bitten twice shy” hypothesis.

Authors

• Nicole Lasky, Northeastern State University

• Bonnie Sue Fisher, University of Cincinnati

• Suzanne Swan, University of South Carolina