Protective Factors for Sexual Violence: Understanding How Trajectories Relate to Perpetration in High School

Introduction: Adolescent sexual violence perpetration is a significant public health problem. Many factors that put adolescents at risk for perpetration have been identified, but less is known about what protects youth from perpetration, or how protective factors may change over time. This study focuses on four potential protective factors for sexual violence perpetration representing different levels of the social ecology – empathy, parental monitoring, social support, and school belonging. Previous cross-sectional research has shown that these factors are associated with less sexual violence perpetration, and that some differences exist between males and females. The goal of this study was to examine changes in these protective factors during adolescence and examine their association with high school sexual violence perpetration.

Methods: Longitudinal data were collected from students in four Midwestern middle schools and six high schools from Spring 2008 to Spring 2013. Using latent growth curve modeling, we investigated the four protective factors for sexual violence perpetration across middle school and high school and examined their association with sexual violence perpetration in high school. We also sought to understand potential sex differences across each of the protective factors according to perpetration status by creating an interaction term between biological sex (female reference group) and high school sexual violence perpetration.

Results: Findings reveal that non-perpetrators displayed higher empathy and reported higher parental monitoring, school belonging, and social support over time compared to perpetrators, though not all differences were statistically significant between perpetration groups. Protective factors in early middle school were all significantly different between perpetrator and non-perpetrator groups whereas only the trajectories of empathy, social support, and parental monitoring distinguished perpetrators and non-perpetrators. Sex differences for empathy and school belongingness trajectories also emerged. Female perpetrators demonstrated a steeper increase in empathy than non-perpetrating females, although non-perpetrators were higher at all time points. School belongingness significantly decreased for both male and female non-perpetrators but remained higher than male and female perpetrators.

Conclusions: These findings have implications for the content and timing of adolescent sexual violence prevention efforts. Early intervention in middle school, involving parents and schools in a comprehensive, multi-level approach, may be most effective in preventing sexual violence perpetration during high school. Future research might help explain why non-perpetrators experience sharper declines in empathy and school belongingness in high school as well as why sex differences exist. Research might also benefit from continuing longitudinal assessments of other protective factors for sexual violence perpetration.