Preliminary Analysis of Teacher Survey on Indiana Adolescent Sexual Assault

Introduction: The purpose of the proposed project is to conduct a research investigating underreporting of adolescent sexual assault in the State of Indiana to create the policy, programs, and/or procedures necessary to either increase prevention or reporting. State of Indiana is one of the highest rates of adolescent sexual assault with low reported cases in the United States. With this backdrop, the present research attempts to collect data from which we might assess the extent to which such crimes are underreported. Teachers, coaches, school personnel including school principal and counselors from 49 schools in the State of Indiana were randomly assigned to participate in the mail surveys asking their communication with adolescents who have experienced sexual assault.

Methods: Funded by Indiana Criminal Justice Institute, we collected teacher surveys as part of a grant project examining under-reporting of adolescence sexual assault in the state of Indiana. Based on the population analysis (Hully & Cumming 1998, Lwanga & Lemeshow 1991), 520 mail surveys were distributed to 92 counties in the state of Indiana, using a random assignment method. As a result, 110 survey responses were returned, which indicates 21.15% of the response rate. A majority of the respondents were female (70%) and the average age was 41.89 years (range from 22 to 67 years). 94.5% were White. Preliminary analysis was performed to examine the descriptive statistics, using SPSS.

Results: Findings suggest that 96.4% of teachers were able to define each type of sexual assault such as forced sexual contact, verbal harassment, verbally coerced sexual intercourse, attempted rape, and completed rape. Findings also indicate teachers’ perceptions of the likelihood of adolescent’s ability to define sexual assaults (mean = 2.09, range from 1 to 4, lower scores represents the likelihood of adolescents’ ability to define sexual assaults). Teachers also reported that substance abuse is highly associated with adolescent sexual assault (mean = 1.71, range from 1 to 4). 56.5% of teachers reported that they had communication about sexual assault with adolescents who do not have any personal experience of sexual assault  (45.4% = occasionally, 10.2% = quite often, .9% = all the time). 33.6% of teachers reported that they had communication about sexual assault with adolescents who experienced sexual assault  (mean = 5.3, range from one time to 20 times). 18.7% of teachers reported that they had communication about sexual assault with adolescents who experienced sexual assault but did not realize that it was sexual assault (mean = 4.5, range from one time to 20 times). Teachers also reported that they observed adolescents talking to other peers about sexual assault by a date and/or a stranger. Teachers reported high self-efficacy of conversation about sexual assault (mean = 1.9, range from 1 to 4, high score indicates the difficulty in talking) and response-efficacy of conversation about sexual assault (mean = 2.9, range from 1 to 4, high score indicates the strong agreement of conversation that prevents sexual assault).

Conclusions: The informative findings will guide policy makers and public health practitioners to prevent adolescent sexual assault.