Sexual Violence on Campus: No Evidence that Studies Are Biased Due to Self-Selection

Numerous research studies suggest that at least one in five female college students is sexually assaulted while enrolled. However, many studies exploring sexual violence prevalence on campus use methodology permitting students to self-select into the study based on interest in the topic (i.e., students receive an email offering them the opportunity to participate in a study on sexual violence). Self-selection may bias these prevalence estimates of campus sexual violence. To explore this issue, we surveyed two samples of college women on their experiences of sexual assault. We recruited Sample 1 in a typical way: by emailing a randomly selected subset of students provided by the university registrar and inviting participation with information about the survey topic. We recruited Sample 2 using a human subjects pool where students in introductory psychology and linguistics courses sign up for studies without prior knowledge about the topic of the research they will participate in (hence greatly minimizing the risk of self-selection). The two samples yielded nearly identical victimization rates. Over a quarter of participants in both our samples had experienced sexual contact without consent, consistent with recent research from the Association of American Universities. College victimization estimates do not appear to be biased by self-selection based on knowledge of the survey topic

Self-Reported Memory for Abuse Depends Upon Victim-Perpetrator Relationship

Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: Website: (c) 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.We present preliminary results from the Betrayal Trauma Inventory (BTI) testing predictions from betrayal trauma theory (Freyd, 1994, 1996, in press) about the relationship between amnesia and betrayal by a caregiver. The BTI assesses trauma history using behaviorally defined events in the domains of sexual, physical, and emotional childhood abuse, as well as other lifetime traumatic events. When participants endorse an abuse experience, follow-up questions assess a variety of factors including memory impairment and perpetrator relationship. Preliminary results support our prediction that abuse perpetrated by a caregiver is related to less persistent memories of abuse. This relationship is significant for sexual and physical abuse. Regression analyses revealed that age was not a significant predictor of memory impairment and that duration of abuse could not account for the findings

Ghosts in modular representation theory

A ghost over a finite p-group G is a map between modular representations of G which is invisible in Tate cohomology. Motivated by the failure of the generating hypothesis---the statement that ghosts between finite-dimensional G-representations factor through a projective---we define the ghost number of kG to be the smallest integer l such that the composition of any l ghosts between finite-dimensional G-representations factors through a projective. In this paper we study ghosts and the ghost numbers of p-groups. We begin by showing that a weaker version of the generating hypothesis, where the target of the ghost is fixed to be the trivial representation k, holds for all p-groups. We then compute the ghost numbers of all cyclic p-groups and all abelian 2-groups with C_2 as a summand. We obtain bounds on the ghost numbers for abelian p-groups and for all 2-groups which have a cyclic subgroup of index 2. Using these bounds we determine the finite abelian groups which have ghost number at most 2. Our methods involve techniques from group theory, representation theory, triangulated category theory, and constructions motivated from homotopy theory.Comment: 15 pages, final version, to appear in Advances in Mathematics. v4 only makes changes to arxiv meta-data, correcting the abstract and adding a do

Limits of small functors

For a small category K enriched over a suitable monoidal category V, the free completion of K under colimits is the presheaf category [K*,V]. If K is large, its free completion under colimits is the V-category PK of small presheaves on K, where a presheaf is small if it is a left Kan extension of some presheaf with small domain. We study the existence of limits and of monoidal closed structures on PK.Comment: 17 page

2-Vector Spaces and Groupoids

This paper describes a relationship between essentially finite groupoids and 2-vector spaces. In particular, we show to construct 2-vector spaces of Vect-valued presheaves on such groupoids. We define 2-linear maps corresponding to functors between groupoids in both a covariant and contravariant way, which are ambidextrous adjoints. This is used to construct a representation--a weak functor--from Span(Gpd) (the bicategory of groupoids and spans of groupoids) into 2Vect. In this paper we prove this and give the construction in detail.Comment: 44 pages, 5 figures - v2 adds new theorem, significant changes to proofs, new sectio

Four problems regarding representable functors

Let $R$, $S$ be two rings, $C$ an $R$-coring and ${}_{R}^C{\mathcal M}$ the category of left $C$-comodules. The category ${\bf Rep}\, ( {}_{R}^C{\mathcal M}, {}_{S}{\mathcal M} )$ of all representable functors ${}_{R}^C{\mathcal M} \to {}_{S}{\mathcal M}$ is shown to be equivalent to the opposite of the category ${}_{R}^C{\mathcal M}_S$. For $U$ an $(S,R)$-bimodule we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the induction functor $U\otimes_R - : {}_{R}^C\mathcal{M} \to {}_{S}\mathcal{M}$ to be: a representable functor, an equivalence of categories, a separable or a Frobenius functor. The latter results generalize and unify the classical theorems of Morita for categories of modules over rings and the more recent theorems obtained by Brezinski, Caenepeel et al. for categories of comodules over corings.Comment: 16 pages, the second versio

Locally class-presentable and class-accessible categories

We generalize the concepts of locally presentable and accessible categories. Our framework includes such categories as small presheaves over large categories and ind-categories. This generalization is intended for applications in the abstract homotopy theory

University Crime Alerts: Do They Contribute to Institutional Betrayal and Rape Myths?

Universities are mandated by the Clery Act (20 USC § 1092(f)) to publicize the occurrence of certain campus crimes. Many universities rely on “Crime Alert” emails to quickly and effectively communicate when a crime has occurred. However, communications of sexual crimes are often narrow (e.g., limited to stranger-perpetrated crimes) and misleading (e.g., containing safety tips that are not applicable to most types of sexual violence). The current paper presents the results of two studies that test the effects of reading crime alert emails on subsequent endorsement of rape myths and institutional betrayal. In Study 1, participants read a typical crime alert email describing a stranger-perpetrated crime, an alternative email describing an acquaintance-perpetrated crime, or a control email describing an event unrelated to interpersonal violence. Men were significantly more likely to endorse rape myths than were women in the control condition, but not in the typical or alternative email condition. In addition, results from Study 1 indicate that issuing crime alert emails following stranger-perpetrated sexual violence leads to a sense of institutional betrayal among students who have experienced acquaintance-perpetrated violence. In Study 2, participants read a typical crime alert email or an alternative digest email. Participants who read the typical email reported higher rape myth acceptance, but not institutional betrayal, than those who read the digest email. There were also significant gender differences in student opinions of each email that suggest the digest email format may serve as a useful tool for engaging male students in the issue of campus sexual violence. Taken together, these studies provide converging evidence that university communication regarding sexual violence can either perpetuate or positively influence attitudes towards sexual violence