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The Aftermath of Cyberstalking: School, Work, Social, and Health Costs of Victimization

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Abstract

The harms crime victims experience extend far beyond the initial victimization and can have severe negative impacts on daily life. Using data collected via a self-report survey from 477 cyberstalking victims, the current study explores the consequences associated with being cyberstalked. Specifically, we seek to identify which characteristics of the victimization incident, cyberstalker, and victim impact the likelihood of experiencing four types of consequences – those that are school-, work-, social-, and health-related. Findings revealed that dimensions of the incident, along with offender and victim characteristics, were significantly related to experiencing consequences as a result of being cyberstalked. A discussion of these findings and suggestions for future research are provided.

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Notes

  1. Workers on MTurk are paid as little as $0.01 per HIT. Rewards are very rarely larger than $1.00 (Paolacci, Chandler, & Ipeirotis, 2010).

  2. Communication technologies are products that transmit or receive communication electronically.

  3. This definition is grounded in existing literature and legal statutes.

  4. Other gender included genderqueer or gender non-conforming, transgender men, transgender women, and questioning.

  5. For example, experiencing health consequences would not impact the victim-offender relationship, or gender of victim/offender. Thus, temporal ordering is not a concern here.

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Correspondence to Erica R. Fissel.

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Fissel, E.R., Reyns, B.W. The Aftermath of Cyberstalking: School, Work, Social, and Health Costs of Victimization. Am J Crim Just 45, 70–87 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-019-09489-1

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