3
is not surprising that victims’ interpretations of their incidents often contradict the legal definitions
that many researchers use to measure sexual assault. But whose definitions should ultimately
determine when victimization has occurred -- researchers using legal (i.e., objective) definitions or
respondents themselves? Can someone be the victim of a sexual crime without themselves
thinking of it as such? Conversely, can someone be considered a “real” victim if the situations
they report are not considered criminal by the larger society? In short, should legal definitions
override individuals’ own definitions of their situations?
3
After merely 15 years of debating the accuracy of sexual assault estimates, the
methodological questions remain: are researchers defining deviance up (i.e., labeling normal sexual
behavior as deviant) as critics allege, or are respondents defining deviance down (i.e., interpreting
deviant behaviors as normal) as feminist researchers claim?
4
How do victims
5
really view their
sexually coercive experiences? While it is impossible to know what the respondents in previous
studies were thinking as they answered questions regarding their sexual experiences, the proposed
research project seeks to explore this largely unexamined cognitive context of victimization.
Overall, this project seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the scope and context of sexual
victimization based primarily on victims’ own definitions of their situations. It does so by utilizing
victim narratives from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a large-scale probability
survey of persons 12 years and older. The NCVS narratives are little-known and largely unexplored
qualitative responses collected as part of the NCVS survey interview, and where respondents are
3
As part of her criticism of violence-against-women research, Sommers (1994) asks “Since when do feminists
consider law to override women’s experience?” (214).
4
The terms defining deviance up and defining deviance down are attributed to Charles Krauthammer (1993) and
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1993) respectively.
5
The term victim is used to refer to survey respondents who report any sexual victimization incident to the NCVS,
regardless of whether or not they consider the incident to be a crime or self-identify as victims.
Convention