Barriers to Reporting

This study compared the perceived campus, peer, and personal rates of four types of sexual violence (sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, nonforcible sex offense, and forcible sex offense) with the documented rates of these same incidents, based on official campus statistics and U.S. census data on forcible rape. Additionally, the barriers to reporting sexual violence among college students were examined. I hypothesized that the results of this study would reveal a pattern of underreporting on campus for all four types of sexual violence. A total of 807 undergraduate respondents (440 females, 204 males, and 5 individuals that identified as transgender or “other”) completed (n = 643) or partially completed (n = 164) a confidential online survey. The results of the study indicated that each form of sexual violence was significantly underreported on campus when compared to the perceived rates of the participants. Furthermore, female students reported a higher number of salient barriers to reporting sexual violence and also rated each of the 15 barriers examined in this study higher than men. Key implications o