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.