Tracy Tamborra
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, University of New Haven
Key Findings
- Half the sample respondents had not experienced sexual coercion with the remainder either having reported at least one act in the past year or reporting a high rate of unwilling sex.
- The analysis of the MSCQ revealed seven interrelated factors: threats and/or physical force, exploitation, humiliation/intimidation, pressure, relational threats and manipulation, hopelessness, and helplessness.
- Perpetrators of sexual coercion use multiple tactics and strategies to obtain sex.
- Past sexual experiences impact victims of coercive sex.
- MSCQ can help understand nuances of tactics under which coercive sex occurs.
Description
In the article, “Development and preliminary validation of the Multidimensional Sexual Coercion Questionnaire (MSCQ),” Tamborra and her co-authors asses the validation of the Multidimensional Sexual Coercion Questionnaire (MSCQ). Sexual coercion was defined in three parts: when the victim resists unsuccessfully, does not give consent (non-consent) or complies under duress. The researchers conducted their study by surveying 762 college students of differing ethnic and socio-economic statuses at both state and private schools in the north and south. The distribution of the scores showed that half of the sample had not experienced sexual coercion with the remainder having reported at least one act in the past year or reporting a high rate of unwilling sex. The analysis of the MSCQ revealed seven interrelated factors: threats and/or physical force, exploitation, humiliation/intimidation, pressure, relational threats and manipulation, hopelessness, and helplessness. This also indicated that perpetrators of sexual coercion use multiple tactics and strategies to obtain sex. The researchers also noted that past sexual experiences impact victims of coercive sex. The authors noted that much of the results matched previous research on the topic and that the MSCQ can help understand nuances of tactics under which coercive sex occurs.