By David Thornton, Ph.D.

This article is a continuation of the series in the ATSA FORUM’s Researchers’ Corner. Each article highlights recent published scientific research and summarizes it in a way that seeks to make it intelligible to clinicians. This article is about Culatta et al. (2024)’s investigation of factors affecting women’s willingness to report sexual assaults to the police.

A wide range of factors are thought to affect whether women who have been sexually assaulted tell the police what happened. This paper examined how perceptions of the justice system affect intentions to report a sexual assault. Culatta et al. distinguish beliefs about three aspects of justice: perceptions of distributive justice (are actual outcomes congruent with expected outcomes; are the outcomes seen as fair), procedural justice (were rules of fair processes followed), and interpersonal justice (are people treated with politeness and respect). They hypothesized that women with negative justice perceptions would be less likely to indicate that they would either report it if they were sexually assaulted or would recommend a friend who had been sexually assaulted to report the assault to the police. Further, they hypothesized that Black women and LGBQ+ women would be more likely to have negative justice perceptions and be less likely to report a sexual assault or recommend that a friend should report. Finally, the authors wanted to investigate whether differences in justice perceptions were sufficient to explain differences in reporting intentions between groups.

The study used Centiment, a company that recruits panels of individuals who are willing to participate (for a fee) in online research surveys. Researchers specify demographic  inclusion criteria (in this case, female, aged 18 to 24) and sends push notifications to panel members who meet these criteria. The notification merely advises that a survey is available, the estimated length of the survey, and the payment for survey completion. If the potential participant clicks on the provided link it takes them to a Qualtrics account where they completed a consent form and then answered demographic questions to ensure that they met inclusion criteria. Either declining consent or not fitting the inclusion criteria would result in being excluded from the survey. The sample was also stratified by educational attainment and race so that less than half the sample was White and about equal proportions had a bachelor’s degree or higher, an associates degree, or a high school education or less.

Quality control on survey responses excluding participants if they incorrectly answered attention check questions, demonstrated excessively repetitive answer patterns or showed unrealistically fast responses. The survey itself involved the following  question stem: “To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements in relation to [your community/your college or university] . . .” followed by the options strongly disagree (= 1), disagree (= 2), agree (= 3), and strongly agree (=4). After this they were asked about justice perceptions. Finally, they were asked about race/ethnicity and gender identity. Additional to these core questions, participants were asked questions regarding variables the researchers wished to statistically control including their own history of being sexually assaulted.

The results supported their initial hypotheses: the intention to report one’s own victimization were weaker if the person had each kind of negative justice perception. Interestingly, only perceptions of interpersonal  justice (are people treated with politeness and respect) were related to advising a friend to report. Results for LGBQ+ women were mainly consistent with hypotheses. They had more negative perceptions of procedural (are rules of fair processes followed), and interpersonal justice and were less inclined to report a sexual assault. However, the lower inclination to report was only partially mediated by negative justice perceptions.

Contrary to expectations, Black women did not have more negative perceptions of the justice system and expressed a similar intention to report if they were sexually assaulted as White non-Hispanic respondents. This last finding is particularly striking, it is commonly supposed in the academic literature and among practitioners that Black people will have more negative perceptions of the justice system and so be less willing to engage with it. At least in this study, that seems not to be the case for Black women.

References

Culatta, E., Boyle, K. M., Shaiman, S., & Sutton, T. E. (2024). Justice Perceptions, Sexual Identity, and Race: Likelihood of Police Reporting Intentions Following Sexual Assault. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00938548241227546