IMPORTANCE Rape on college campuses has been addressed recently by a presidential proclamation, federal legislation, advocacy groups, and popular media. Many initiatives assume that most college men who perpetrate rape are serial rapists. The scientific foundation for this perspective is surprisingly limited. OBJECTIVE To determine whether a group of serial rapists exists by identifying cohesive groups of young men, indicated by their trajectories of rape likelihood across high school and college. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Latent class growth analysis of the 2 largest longitudinal data sets of adolescent sexual violence on college campuses using 2 distinct groups of male college students. The first group was used for derivation modeling (n = 847; data collected

A significant proportion of incoming male freshmen have perpetrated SV previously. Colleges and universities need to assess incoming freshmen for risk behaviors and negative beliefs and to offer both primary and secondary preventions to more effectively reduce further perpetration.

Objective To investigate the impact of answering survey questions about experiences of stressful, stigmatizing, potentially traumatic and sexually violating events on well being, defined as reactions to research, anxiety, and positive and negative affect over two weeks. Method With an ethnically diverse sample of 559 higher education students, we employed a mixed experimental design (with between and within-subjects components) to evaluate changes in positive and negative affect, anxiety, traumatic stress symptoms, and reactions to research. We used multilevel regression models and planned contrasts to determine which, if any, specific characteristics of the survey questions caused changes in well being by comparing the effects of answering a randomly assigned set of survey questions about stressful, stigmatizing, potentially traumatic, or sexually violating life events across a two-week period. Results Controlling for baseline post-traumatic stress symptoms and levels of the outcome, we identified few statistically significant effects between conditions or across time. Significant effects included a small decrease in positive affect immediately after responding to questions about sexually violating events, which diminished at two weeks; these same participants perceived fewer drawbacks to research participation. Participants who responded to questions about stressful life events reported greater perceptions of benefits. Conclusions Our data support the safety of survey research on sexual assault or other stressful, stigmatizing, or potentially traumatic events.

Objective: Researchers rarely have an opportunity to study first-person narratives of sexual assault perpetration. Because of a prompt anonymously posted to a popular online community, we were able to examine perpetrators' own descriptions of, and justifications for, sexual assault. Method: Thematic analysis was conducted on a sample of 68 anonymous first-person accounts of sexual assault perpetration collected from Reddit.com. Results: Themes focus on sexual scripts, victim blame, hostile sexism, biological essentialism, objectification, and sociosexuality. Relationships among these themes are described. Conclusion: We contextualize our findings in the empirical literature on sexual assault and in earlier related feminist theory. Our goal is to use these novel data to further inform research and prevention efforts, making recommendations for policy and clinical efforts such as clinical intervention with perpetrators to decrease cognitive distortions of blame.

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