Study Title-Based Framing Effects on Reports of Sexual Violence and Associated Risk Factors in College Students

Abstract

Objective: There are many methodological issues in studying sexual violence, including potential framing effects. Framing effects refer to how researchers communicate the purpose of a study to participants, such as, how the study is advertised or explained. The aim of this study was to investigate if framing effects were associated with differences in participants’ self-reported experiences of sexual violence and related correlates. Methods: College students ( N = 782) were recruited to participate in one of four identical studies that differed in the title: “Questionnaires about Alcohol,” “Questionnaires about Crime,” “Questionnaires about Health,” or “Questionnaires about Sexual Assault.” Participants chose one of the four studies and completed measures of sexual violence as well as attitudinal and behavioral measures in randomized order. Results: We found significantly more reports of childhood sexual abuse (33.6% vs. 18.5%), rape (33.9% vs. 21.1%), higher frequency of victimization ( M = 11.35 vs. 5.44), and greater acknowledged rape for bisexual people (46.2% vs. 0.0%) in the sexual assault (SA) condition compared to other conditions. There were no differences in sexual violence perpetration or attitudinal or behavioral measures. Conclusion: These results revealed that framing effects, based on the study title, affect outcomes in sexual victimization research. Rape was reported 1.6× more in the “Sexual Assault” condition than in the “Health” condition. It is unclear whether these framing effects reflect self-selection bias or framing related increased reports in the SA condition, suppression of reports in other conditions, or a combination thereof.

An Experimental Test of the Impact of Varying Questionnaire Response Format on Prevalence Rates for Sexual Violence Victimization and Perpetration

“…Further, a growing body of research suggests that the design features of questionnaires can impact associated prevalence rates. Characteristics such as the mode participants complete questionnaires in (paper vs. computer, McCallum & Peterson, 2017), what participants believe the topic of the study is influence respondent behavior (Anderson et al, 2021b), even for innocuous behaviors such as how much television is watched (Schwarz et al, 1991). These effects may or may not be further magnified when considering stigmatized behaviors.…”