Prevalence, types and predictors of sexual aggression among college students

Abstract

Sexual aggression refers to the use of various ways (verbal pressure, physical force, etc.) in order to compel another person to sexual activities without his/her consent. To understand more profoundly sexual aggression among Croatian students, the study was conducted with the aim of determining prevalence, types, and risk factors for sexual aggression on a sample of college students. In the online research, 458 students from various Croatian universities took part. Sexual aggression was measured by the Croatian translation of the Sexual Strategies Scale (SSS; Strange et al., 2013). The results have shown that students who use aggressive sexual strategies are more prone to gender prejudices, are more likely to engage in risky behaviors (alcohol consumption and impersonal sex), perceive greater peer pressure to have sex, and are higher on personality traits of psychopathy and narcissism, compared to students who do not use these strategies. The results of testing the predictive contribution of sets of variables assert the significant contribution of narcissism, peer pressure to have sex, sociosexuality, and alcohol consumption in explaining the variance of the number of sexually aggressive strategies used.