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Urban Commuter Campus Students’ Perspectives on Sexual Violence: Implications for Response and Prevention

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Abstract

Sexual violence victimization is unacceptably common in the US, with nearly half of women and one in five men reporting lifetime sexual coercion and/or unwanted sexual contact; much violence occurs in campus settings. The majority of sexual violence prevention programs designed to date were not developed around the needs of urban commuter campus students. The present study explored qualitatively how these students conceptualize sexual violence and prevention. Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with students on how they recognized sexual violence and understood prevention. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed. Commuter students used “gut feelings” to identify sexual violence, reporting minimal direct consent communication. Intersecting social identities and multiple, concurrent roles limit the potential impact of existing prevention programs. Further research to design and evaluate tailored sexual violence prevention programming for urban commuter campus students is needed.

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Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study may be made available upon request from the corresponding author, VF. The data are not publicly available due to the nature of the data (qualitative data) which contains information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by a grant to Dr. Frye (RFCUNY 75093-0001) from the Crime Victims Treatment Center. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the study participants who gave their time and effort to this study.

Funding

This research was supported by a grant to Dr. Frye from the Crime Victims Treatment Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Community Health and Social Medicine, City University of New York School of Medicine, 160 Convent Avenue, Harris Hall Suite 313, New York, NY, 10031, USA

    Martina Delle Donne, Kimberly DeLaCruz, Khadija Khan, Wilka Diaz & Victoria Frye

  2. Faculty of Medicine and Psychology, La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

    Martina Delle Donne

  3. City College of New York, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Jasmin Salcedo & Sophia English

  4. School of Social Work, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Victoria Banyard

  5. Center for Sexuality and Health Disparities and the Department of Systems, Population and Leadership, School of Nursing, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Robert Stephenson

  6. New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault, New York, NY, USA

    Mary Haviland

Authors
  1. Martina Delle Donne
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  2. Kimberly DeLaCruz
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  3. Khadija Khan
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  4. Wilka Diaz
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  5. Jasmin Salcedo
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  6. Sophia English
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  7. Victoria Banyard
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  8. Robert Stephenson
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  9. Mary Haviland
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  10. Victoria Frye
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Victoria Frye.

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Donne, M.D., DeLaCruz, K., Khan, K. et al. Urban Commuter Campus Students’ Perspectives on Sexual Violence: Implications for Response and Prevention. J Urban Health 97, 137–147 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-019-00361-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-019-00361-5

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