Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper presents findings from a larger project that seeks to expand an understanding of the empirical scope and context of sexual victimization. It does so by examining the ways in which survey respondents themselves define their situations within the open-ended narrative responses collected as part of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). By utilizing these largely untapped qualitative data from the NCVS, a large-scale probability survey of persons age 12 and older, this study enables a rare glimpse into the cognitive processes of victimization, while at the same time providing a large enough representative sample to make findings generalizable to the US population. The primary objective of the analysis in this paper is to examine the "non-classifying" incidents reported to the NCVS. Such non-classifying incidents, which include sexual harassment and unwanted sexual contact at school and in the workplace, exemplify the many sexually coercive situations that fall within the murky definitional space between what society constructs as criminal and what individuals perceive to be deviant. Expanding the scope of sexual coercion will enable research to move beyond merely counting legally-defined conditions that constitute sexual assault and move towards a more inclusive understanding of the broader scope, context and multifaceted realities of sexual victimization.