Assessing women’s experiences of sexual aggression using the Sexual Experiences Survey: Evidence for validity and implications for research

Abstract

In this study we examined the ability of a modified Sexual Experiences Survey (SES; Koss, Gidycz, &Wisniewski, 1987) to assess sexual victimization among a local community sample of women (n = 1,014). Women who reported sexual victimization were interviewed regarding the most recent incident. Those who responded negatively to all SES items were asked whether they had ever feared they would be sexually assaulted but were not, and to describe that incident. Independent coders read a subset of transcripts (n = 137) and classified each incident as reflecting: one of the SES items, a form of unwanted sex not included on the SES, or not unwanted sex. Coders viewed nearly all incidents elicited by the SES as reflecting some type of unwanted sex. Respondent-coder agreement for rape and coercion incidents was high, but low for contact and attempted rape incidents. The SES scoring continuum, reflecting objective severity of acts, was only modestly associated with subjective trauma associated with rape, attempted rape, coercion, and contact. Self-report is often the only way of obtaining information on many private and sensitive experiences because they are not officially reported, witnessed, or even disclosed to oth-ers. This is particularly true in the case of women’s sexual aggression experiences, which are believed to be stigma-tizing and prone to underreporting. Crime surveys, whic