title: Latent profiles among sexual assault survivors: understanding survivors and their assault experiences.
abstract: Little guidance exists about how to tailor empowerment and resistance sexual assault programming to be responsive to varying groups of women. Using an investigation of 415 college women who completed a self-administered survey about a range of sexually aggressive experiences by a known male assailant, this investigation tested for distinct multivariate profiles of contextual factors among sexually assaulted women to discern how these factors may differentially combine to influence women's vulnerability to sexual assault. We applied latent profile analysis (LPA) to determine meaningful subgroups of women based on interrelationships among factors that contextualize women's vulnerability to sexual assault, including prior victimization, alcohol consumption, relationship expectancies of the assailant, and assertive precautionary habits. LPA established four significantly distinct multivariate profiles of substantively different groups of women. Group difference tests reinforced the findings and aided in group profile interpretations. Implications for the development of tailored resistance and empowerment programs are discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. rjmacy@email.unc.edu
authors.forename: Rebecca J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Macy
authors.forename: Paula S
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Nurius
authors.forename: Jeanette
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Norris
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology*; D018585:Battered Women / Q000523:psychology*; D003068:Coercion; D019548:Crime Victims / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D009657:North Carolina; D012044:Regression Analysis; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013179:Spouse Abuse / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D016387:Women's Health