Sexual violence is a major public health issue within the United States, particularly that with perpetrators who are men and victims who are women. Understanding risk factors for sexual violence perpetration is necessary to decrease the overall severity of sexual violence. In past research, psychological reactance has been shown to be associated with sexual violence perpetration, yet there is limited research on this association. Additionally, previous research has found that other traits may enhance the predictive properties of psychological reactance and that sensation seeking can predict sexual violence risk factors and sexual violence perpetration. Yet there is little to no research on how sensation seeking and psychological reactance work jointly to predict sexual violence perpetration. This thesis aims to explore these factors as possible predictors for sexual violence perpetration and sensation seeking as a moderator of the relationship between reactance and sexual violence perpetration. A better understanding of these predictors could allow for new ways to understand sexual violence perpetration overall and aid in future research. Based on this information, reactance, sensation seeking, and their interaction effect are all expected to significantly predict sexual violence perpetration. The current study examined 226 participants who were men, single, attracted to women, and over the age of 18 living in the U.S. Participants were recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk, and completed an online survey hosted on Qualtrics. Participants reported past sexual violence perpetration, sensation seeking, psychological reactance, and demographic information. Results provided partial support for the hypothesis. Findings indicated that higher levels of psychological reactance and sensation seeking were positively associated with sexual violence perpetration; however, sensation seeking as a moderator was not significant.

This study was conducted to explore the relationship between social support and youth violence by testing the relationships between violence victimization, violence exposure, violence perpetration, delinquency, and the moderating variable of social support for rural female adolescents in the United States. This research, guided by the social disorganization theory, involved analyses of data from Wave 3 of the National Survey for Children's Exposure to Violence. The logistic regression analyses (n = 278; female; rural area; mean age 13.5) showed no moderating effect of social support on youth violence perpetration. However, there was a positive association between delinquency and violence perpetration, and a relationship between violence victimization in the forms of child maltreatment, exposure to peer victimization, exposure to sibling victimization, exposure to family violence, witnessing violence, and indirect victimization and violence perpetration. The research contributes to positive social change by providing more evidence about the gender-specific needs of rural adolescent females. This evidence may be used in the development of sustainable violence prevention programs and other services designed to prevent child maltreatment and other forms of violence exposure and victimizations, and subsequent violence perpetration.

Peer violence perpetration and victimization are the most common types of violence among youths (Swahn et al., 2008). This study determined the associations between peer violence attitudes and involvement in peer violence perpetration and peer violence victimization among boys and girls in high-risk urban community. Analyses were based on data from the 2004 Youth Violence Survey, administered to over 80% of public school students in grades 7, 9, 11, and 12 (N = 4131) in a high-risk urban community. Chi-square and logistic regression analyses were conducted to test the associations between attitudes and involvement in violent behaviors after controlling for demographic characteristics and potential confounders (e.g., child maltreatment, substance use, weapon carrying, and efficacy to avoid violence). Results show that among all youths, attitudes supporting boys hitting boys significantly increased the odds of peer violence perpetration (AOR: 1.48; 95% CI = 1.13, 1.95). However, stratified analyses for boys and girls show that attitudes supporting boys hitting boys increased the odds of peer violence perpetration for girls only (AOR: 1.57; 95% CI = 1.04, 2.37). The findings demonstrate associations between attitudes and actual involvement in violent behaviors, but they need to be further explored. Additional research is needed to determine how attitude modifications can be incorporated into youth violence prevention programs.

Master of Science / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / An individual’s desire to marry and ideal age of marriage, two elements of the marital horizon theory, are examined in relation to dating violence perpetration, both physical assault and psychological aggression, in the present study using a sample of 611 college students from a large Midwestern university. Looking at the possible predictive power that the marital horizon variables might have on dating violence perpetration, above and beyond other known predictors of dating violence, could reveal an important area of investigation in both the emerging adulthood literature and the dating violence literature. Results indicate that victimization of dating violence accounted for the vast majority of the variance in perpetration of dating violence. Desire to marry emerged as a significant predictor of women’s perpetration of psychological aggression only when the victimization variables were excluded from the regression equation.

The effect of self-control on one’s criminal offending is a product of both an individual’s capacity to exercise self-control as well as their desire to exercise self-control. The present study utilized self-report data gathered at a large urban university in Florida (n=1,307) to test the independent and interactive effects of control-capacity and control-desire on intimate partner violence perpetration. The study suggests that while both capacity and desire for control have effects on one’s likelihood of reporting IPV, these effects are independent of each other.

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