Enhancing the Quality of Survey Data on Woman Abuse on the College Campus

• In Event: Victimization among college students

Abstract

Recently, only a few fields have moved as far and fast as research on woman abuse in North American institutions of higher education. Despite major empirical advances that have been made since the mid 1980s, obtaining accurate estimates of the prevalence of various types of violence against women on the college campus is still one of the biggest methodological challenges in survey research. The problem of underreporting is difficult to overcome and is not likely to be eliminated in the near future. For example, many women do not disclose their victimization experiences because of fear of reprisal, reluctance to recall traumatic memories, memory error, and other factors. Yet, there are several effective ways of minimizing underreporting, one of which is adding a supplementary open-ended question to a questionnaire. Using qualitative data derived from the Campus Quality of Life Survey (CQLS), the main objective of this paper is to show that asking respondents to complete such a question situated at the end of an instrument increases violence against women prevalence rates and provides information on harms that are not included in widely used and validated measures to assess sexual assault, stalking, intimate partner violence, and sexual harassment.

Authors

• Walter Steven DeKeseredy, West Virginia University

• Gabrielle Lory, West Virginia University

• Danielle M. Stoneberg, West Virginia University

• Robert Nicewarner, West Virginia University

• James Nolan, West Virginia University