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Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research,
Practice, and Policy
The Sexual Encounters Questionnaire: A Gender-Inclusive Survey of Sexual
Victimization Across the Lifespan
Ashley K. H. Catton and Martin J. Dorahy
Online First Publication, March 28, 2024. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0001695
CITATION
Catton, A. K. H., & Dorahy, M. J. (2024). The Sexual Encounters Questionnaire: A gender-inclusive survey of
sexual victimization across the lifespan.. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
Advance online publication. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/tra0001695
The Sexual Encounters Questionnaire: A Gender-Inclusive Survey
of Sexual Victimization Across the Lifespan
Ashley K. H. Catton and Martin J. Dorahy
School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of Canterbury
Objective: Despitesexual victimization posing a serious social problem worldwide, inconsistencies in the con-
ceptualization, definition, and measurement of sexual violence meanthat many victims are not included in sur-
veys designed to quantify the nature of this problem. The present studies developed, piloted, and finalized a
novel survey of victimization, the sexual encounters questionnaire (SEQ), a robust and extensive tool that
screens for a range of sexual violation scenarios that can be perpetrated against a victim of any gender and
age. Method: Study 1 piloted the original version of the SEQ among 458 students while Study 2 examined
the psychometric properties of the SEQ in a sample of 150 students. Results: Study 1 found an overall victim-
ization rate of 76.9%, with 59.8% of men and 80.5% of women being identified as victims. The prevalenceand
severity of victimization were higher among women than men. Twelve-month prevalence rates ranged from
2.2% to 23.4% depending on the type of violation surveyed with an overall 12-month prevalence of 34.9%.
Study 2 found convergent validity with other measures of sexual victimization, and discriminant validity
with participants’political orientation and a fear of intimacy measure. Conclusion: The SEQ, with more sen-
sitivity to detect sexual victimization, showed highlevels of victimization in students. These results suggest the
usefulness of the SEQ as a gender-inclusive screening tool for sexual victimization across the lifespan.
Clinical Impact Statement
Extant surveys of sexual victimization do not include many types of violations that can be committed
against a victim of any gender and age, by any perpetrator. A lack of inclusivity means that many dis-
tressing experiences of sexual violation do not get counted. This study introduces a new tool to survey
for sexual victimization that overcomes these limitations, by including a wide range of gender- and age-
neutral scenarios that allow for more people to be included as victims.
Keywords: sexual victimization, questionnaire, gender-inclusive
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001695.supp
Although sexual violence is a widespread social problem, there are
substantial differences in how sexual victimization is defined and
measured, with international 12-month prevalence rates of sexual vio-
lation ranging between 0% and 59.2% for women and 0.3% and
55.5% for men (Dworkin et al., 2021). For the current project, “sexual
victimization”is an umbrella term to describe any instance of an
unwanted sexual experience (USE), including rape (legally defined
within numerous jurisdictions), sexual assault (as any USE that is
not included in regional definitions of “rape”), and sexual abuse
(any USE that results from a misuse of power by an authority figure,
typically in childhood). Further, we use the term “victims”of sexual
victimization in an objective sense and are both mindful of and sym-
pathetic toward preferences to maintain the dignity of those who have
experienced such events and who may prefer terms such as “survi-
vors”and “individuals who have experienced sexual victimization.”
Measures of sexual violence vary by tactic and/or act (Krause et al.,
2019). Tactics refer to howa violation occurred (i.e., use of force, inca-
pacitation, or coercion) whereas the act describes what type of viola-
tion took place, whether physical contact, attempted penetration,
actual penetration, or being made to penetrate another (“forced pene-
tration”). As any combination of these factors constitutes working def-
initions of sexual assault, it has been argued that the absence of
standardized definitions of sexual victimization prevents accurate
comparison between studies (Fedina et al., 2018;Krause et al.,
2019). For instance, a common operational definition defines rape
as nonconsensual penetration of a woman’s vagina, mouth, or anus
(Chen & Ullman, 2010;Wolitzky-Taylor et al., 2011). By contrast,
Martin J. Dorahy https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0171-4913
Open Access funding provided by University of Canterbury: This work is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(CC BY 4.0; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). This license per-
mits copying and redistributing the work in any medium or format, as well as
adapting the material for any purpose, even commercially.
Ashley K. H. Catton served as lead for conceptualization, data curation,
formal analysis, investigation, and writing–original draft and contributed
equally to methodology. Martin J. Dorahy served as lead for supervision,
contributed equally to writing–review and editing, and served in a supporting
role for formal analysis, investigation, and methodology.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Martin
J. Dorahy, School of Psychology, Speech and Hearing, University of
Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand. Email:
martin.dorahy@canterbury.ac.nz
Psychological Trauma:
Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy
© 2024 The Author(s)
ISSN: 1942-9681 https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001695
1
other operational definitions of rape are broader and include any wom-
an’s experience of unwanted sexual contact or coercion (Orchowski
et al., 2009;Starzynski et al., 2005).
The focus on women’s victimization experiences comes at the
expense of a more complete understanding of the nature of adult sex-
ual victimization, by concealing the existence of victimization expe-
riences that do not conform to the traditional man-against-woman
stereotype (Munroe & Shumway, 2022;Turchik et al., 2016). This
concealment cannot be attributed to a lack of occurrence as the lim-
ited research available suggests such violations against men are com-
mon. For instance, Anderson et al. (2020) found that up to 10% of
men were victims of forced penetration and Breiding (2015) found
12-month prevalence rates of “other”sexual violence (i.e., nonrape)
at 5.5% among women and 5.1% among men. Similarly, Munroe
and Shumway (2022) found that 19.6% of those who had been
abused by a woman stated this occurred during adulthood. Thus,
an age- and gender-inclusive paradigm is crucial to understanding
the nature of sexual violence.
Several studies have aimed to be gender-inclusive in their method-
ology. Although not directly assessing sexual victimization among
its participants, Sable et al. (2006) investigated barriers to disclosure
of sexual assault among both men and women. Similarly, a gender-
inclusive means of identifying victims by Walsh et al. (2010) used a
single question asking participants how many times they had expe-
rienced unwanted sexual contact among those utilizing a sexual vic-
timization crisis service at a university.
The use of behaviorally specific questions may be the most effec-
tive means of measuring sexual violence, particularly if the respon-
dent only needs to answer a direct closed question, rather than
voluntarily provide information to an open question (Krebs, 2014;
Krebs et al., 2021). In addition, the use of a broad-scale response for-
mat, where respondents are asked how many times a specific behav-
ior has occurred rather than whether it has happened, has also been
found to maximize response rates among men, and victims of verbal
coercion generally (Anderson & Cuccolo, 2022).
A common survey of sexual assault is the Sexual Experiences
Survey-Revised (SES-R) that asks respondents whether they have
experienced any of seven different nonconsensual sexual situations
ranging, on a severity continuum, from nonpenetrative contact to
anal penetration (Koss et al., 2007). Respondents indicate how
many times an experience occurred within the last 12 months, and
since the age of 14. If endorsed, several follow-up questions enquire
about tactics used. Because of its focus on situational prompts, the
survey has been used in gender-inclusive studies (Krahe & Berger,
2013;Littleton et al., 2019). However, a significant limitation of
the SES is that it does not survey some instances of perpetration
by women such as forced penetration. A study by Anderson et al.
(2020) included forced penetration in a modified version of the
SES, finding that 4.5%–10.6% of men reported this experience.
Indeed, the SES has been found to have poor test-retest reliability
and convergent validity in assessing the victimization of men,
with the conflict tactics scale (CTS) producing a greater victimiza-
tion rate among men than the SES, despite only measuring victimi-
zation by an intimate partner (Anderson et al., 2018,2019). As such,
a gender-inclusive survey of sexual victimization needs to include
the types of violations experienced by both women and men.
Further, it does not include victimization by voyeurism, instances
of which have made headline news, particularly in the form of non-
consensual recordings made of individuals in intimate settings such
as bathrooms and dressing rooms (e.g., Hurley, 2019;Schmidt,
2020). A further limitation of the SES is that it cannot account for
lifetime prevalence, given that it only surveys experiences since
the age of 14, thus does not include childhood sexual abuse (CSA).
By contrast, the literature on CSA is more often concerned with
age-based experiences than gender (Finkelhor et al., 2014;Spataro
et al., 2004). Most operational definitions focus on abuse that occurs
within age brackets, with an upper age limit ranging between 12 and
17, where 14 years is the most common limit (Hulme, 2004).
Measures of CSA vary, but the adverse childhood experiences
questionnaire is commonly used (Dolson et al., 2021;Easton,
2012). The adverse childhood experiences questionnaire has an
upper age limit of 18 and provides a set of scenarios with a dichot-
omous response format of various adverse experiences (Felitti et al.,
1998). However, one limitation is that questions about sexual viola-
tion specify a perpetrator who is at least 5 years older than the
respondent at the time of violation. Dolson et al. (2021) found that
47% of CSA victims indicated their perpetrator’s age was within 5
years of the victim. In addition, the upper age limit of 18 years is
inconsistent with the most common age limit of 14 years.
Similarly, the childhood traumatic events scale (CTES) surveys trau-
matic experiences prior to 18 (Pennebaker & Susman, 1988).
However, a limitation of the CTES is that it is contingent upon a
respondent’s interpretation of the expression “traumatic sexual expe-
rience”and, although it provides examples of rape and molestation,
it still requires respondents to understand the definition of such
terms. For this reason, a measure of CSA is more likely to yield
an accurate prevalence rate if it provides situational prompts.
Developing and evaluating a measure of sexual victimization that
accounted for the experiences of victimized men, women, and chil-
dren, while not leaving items too open to respondent interpretation
were part of a larger set of objectives for the present study. This
occurred across two studies, with Study 1 developing and piloting
the new survey and Study 2 evaluating its psychometric properties.
Study 1
The nature of sexual victimization among university students is fre-
quently studied (e.g., Anderson & Delahanty, 2020;Littleton et al.,
2019;Rosenthal & Freyd, 2018). A recent campus study using an
adapted version of the SES in New Zealand found that 28% of respon-
dents had experienced at least one form of sexual victimization while
at university (Beres et al., 2020). Comparing student victimization by
gender, the SES detected victimization among 32%–37% of women,
and 12%–13% of men depending on the timeframe in question (Beres
et al., 2020;Littleton et al., 2019). Given the limitations of the SES,
and the absence of research on lifetime prevalence among students,
it is likely that lifetime victimization rates are higher. The goal of
the present study was to develop, administer, and evaluate a novel sur-
vey of sexual victimization among university students.
Method
Participants
Five hundred and eighty-three (N=583) students from a New
Zealand university were recruited for this study. One hundred and
twenty-five (n=125) incomplete responses were removed from
the study, resulting in a final sample size of 458. Most of the incom-
plete responses included key nondemographic variables (e.g., sexual
CATTON AND DORAHY2
encounters questionnaire [SEQ]). As such, no analyses could be per-
formed to identify patterns among those who did not complete this
study. The final sample ranged from 17 to 55 years, with a M
age
of
21.11 (SD =5.46). By gender, 359 were women (78.4%), 87 were
men (19%), 10 identified as nonbinary (2.2%), and two identified
as “other”(0.4%). Six participants (1.3%) identified as transgender.
Regarding ethnicity, 348 (76%) identified as Pakeha/New Zealand
European, 56 (12.23%) were New Zealand Ma
ori with the remaining
12% identified as other ethnicities. For sexual orientation, 314
(68.6%) identified as heterosexual, 77 (16.8%) were bisexual, 17
(3.7%) were homosexual, 12 (2.6%) were asexual, with the remain-
ing 37 (8.1%) identifying as “other.”Regarding political orientation,
216 (47.2%) stated they were nonpolitical, 204 (44.5%) were left
leaning/progressive, 26 (5.7%) were right leaning/conservative, 13
(2.8%) were libertarian, and 11 (2.4%) described themselves as
“other.”Participants received either course credit or entered the
draw to win a small voucher from a local supermarket.
Materials
Self-Report Measures
The demographic questionnaire asked participants age, gender,
sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, political orientation, relation-
ship status, and disability status.
SEQ. Developed for this study, the SEQ is a survey that screens
for victims of sexual violence. As the survey was administered as part
of a broader study on disclosure of sexual victimization, items were
chosen to represent a range of distressing sexual violation experiences
that would likely result in disclosure, in contrast to other surveys
where items are often based on legal definitions (Koss et al., 2007).
Included items relate to nonconsensual touching and penetration as
seen in the SES (Koss et al., 2007), and an item assessing voyeurism
which, although rarely assessed, is known to occur (e.g., Hurley,
2019;Schmidt, 2020). The items were produced to reflect any kind
of sexual violation that could be committed by any perpetrator against
any victim, regardless of their gender or age. Further, a distinction was
made between acts of nonconsensual penetration that occur either
without any active participation of the victim (e.g., where the victim
is not conscious or is physically restrained) and where the victim is
physically forced to participate in the sexual act (e.g., where a victim
has been physically coerced into performing a sexual act, such as oral
sex). However, attempted sexual violations were omitted to maintain
the SEQ’s primary focus on completed violations. As the survey is
designed to assess lifetime prevalence, each scenario begins with
the question: “How many times in your lifetime has someone, without
your consent or permission: ….”The word “permission”was chosen
to supplement “consent”to minimize the possibility of a subjective or
ambiguous understanding as consent can be understood as implicit or
explicit, and nonverbal or verbal (e.g., Jozkowskietal.,2019), the
interpretation of which may be strengthened by adding the word
“permission.”
Thus, it presents five screening scenarios that state either an act or
tactic: victimization by voyeurism (i.e., an act; e.g., “How many
times in your lifetime has someone: spied on you, taken photos, or
recorded a video of you for their own sexual gratification without
your consent or permission?”), nonconsensual touching (i.e., act),
verbal coercion (i.e., tactic), being used as a passive sexual object
(i.e., act), and being physically forced to have sex with another
person (i.e., tactic). The wording and format of the SEQ was influ-
enced by the SES (Koss et al., 2007) but was amended to present
a broader frequency scale (0, 1, 2–5, 6–9, 10+rather than 0, 1, 2,
3+) and includes items related to perpetration by women, victimiza-
tion of men, and CSA, with the initial screening question being in a
broader scaled format than the SES, as suggested by Anderson and
Cuccolo (2022). Follow-up questions for each scenario ask how old
the respondent was the first time an experience of this type occurred,
with remaining questions pertaining to the most recent time it
occurred, the gender of and relationship to the perpetrator, and ques-
tions about the nature of the assault itself.
Like the SES, the final question asks respondents if they subjec-
tively consider themselves to be victims of rape, sexual assault, or
sexual abuse. The SEQ produces lifetime frequencies within each
category and a 12-month victimization prevalence rate. Victims
are identified categorically with a dichotomous variable or with a
continuous severity score. As with the SES, the severity score is cal-
culated by counting the most severe category of victimization
endorsed from 0 to 5, with 0 indicating no victimization and 5 indi-
cating the respondent had experienced an instance of physical coer-
cion. The severity ordering was based, a priori, upon both the degree
of physical violation of, and participation by, an individual. The
original version of the SEQ is available online at https://osf.io/
5zfd2/.Koss et al. (2007) argue that surveys of sexual victimization
should avoid adopting a latent model framework, given that there is
no prior theoretical reason for assuming that any necessary correla-
tion should exist between categories of sexual violation. For this rea-
son, the SEQ was not analyzed for any underlying factor structure
(see Koss et al. 2007 for a discussion on this point). Despite this,
the reporting of internal consistency is standard for any scale mea-
sure. The Cronbach’sαfor the SEQ in this study was .80, demon-
strating good internal consistency.
Distress. Participants were asked to rate, on single item mea-
sures, the degree of overall distress, shame, fear, and uncertainty
they experienced as a result of the most severe item they endorsed
on the SEQ. Items were presented on a 10-point Likert scale from
0(none)to10(the most extreme distress ever experienced). This
measure was included to assess the validity of ordering of SEQ
items underlying the severity measure.
Procedure
This study formed part of a larger study assessing the nature of
disclosure of sexual victimization. The study was completed using
an online survey platform on the participant’s own electronic
device.
Participants were recruited either within the psychology depart-
ment for course credit or they responded to an advertisement dis-
tributed across the university campus to participate in a study
entitled “Sexual Encounters Questionnaire.”Participants were pre-
sented with an internet link to complete the survey, which began
with an introduction screen that informed them of the nature of
the survey questions involved, and a consent questionnaire. They
were then presented with a demographic questionnaire before
being administered questionnaires relevant to the disclosure
study, including the SEQ. After this, participants were presented
with a debrief script informing them of mental health services
available both immediately and by appointment. The study was
approved by the University’s Human Ethics Committee.
SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS QUESTIONNAIRE 3
Results
To evaluate the validity of the ordering of victimization categories
underlying the SEQ severity measure, mean levels of self-reported
distress were calculated by victimization severity. As shown in
Table 1, 12 participants had experienced voyeurism only and 66
reported being physically coerced. Those who had only experienced
acts of voyeurism rated their overall distress, uncertainty, and fear as
higher than those in the following category of nonconsensual touch-
ing, however, shame was lower than the subsequent category. This
indicates that the ordering of categories by severity, except for voy-
eurism, is supported by the level of overall distress, shame, fear, and
uncertainty of those who have experienced those types of violations.
Victimization Across the Lifespan
Among the sample, 76.9% identified as having been sexually vic-
timized at least once in their lifetime (n=352). As Table 2 illustrates,
the most common lifetime victimization type was nonconsensual
touching, whereas the least common was physical coercion. By gen-
der, 59.8% (n=52) of men and 80.5% (n=289) of women were
identified as victims. A chi-square test found that women were signifi-
cantly more victimized than men, with a small effect size, χ
2
(1, N=
446) =16.72, p,.001, Cramer’sV=0.19. Low participant counts
of those who identify as nonbinary or “other”prevented statistical
comparisons with these groups. However, nine out of 10 nonbinary
individuals and all six transgender individuals were identified as vic-
tims by the SEQ—the latter being otherwise grouped within the gen-
der they identify with.
Among those who endorsed at least one victimization item, 51.4%
(n=181) answered “yes”to the self-identification question asking
whether they had been raped, sexually assaulted, or sexually abused
at any point in their life, 28.4% (n=100) answered “no,”and 20.2%
(n=71) did not know. By gender, 28.9% (n=15) of victimized
men answered “yes,”48.1% (n=25) said “no,”23.1% (n=12)
did not know, whereas 55% (n=159) of victimized women
answered “yes,”25.3% (n=73) answered “no,”and 19.7% (n=
57) did not know. A chi-square test found this difference in self-
identification of victimization between men and women to be signif-
icant with a moderate effect, χ
2
(2, N=446) =30.11, p,.001,
Cramer’sV=0.26, thus indicating that women were significantly
more likely to acknowledge their victimization than men, even
though just under half did not self-identify as a victim of sexual vio-
lation despite acknowledging the experience of it.
Regarding the severity of victimization among those who were
identified as victims (M=3.43, SD =1.14), 3.7% (n=12) indicated
they had only experienced acts of voyeurism, whereas 22.4% (n=79)
experienced acts up to nonconsensual touching, 19.9% (n=70) expe-
rienced acts up to verbal coercion, 35.2% (n=124) reported acts of
passivity, and 18.8% (n=66) experienced physical coercion. The
mean severity score for men was lower (M=3.04, SD =1.14) than
for women (M=3.50, SD =1.12), a difference that was statistically
significant with a small-medium effect size, t(339) =−2.73, p=.01,
Cohen’sd=−0.41. This suggests that women experienced a greater
degree of victimization severity than men.
Table 3 illustrates the frequency of violations and shows that being
victimized 10 or more instances is rare compared to five or fewer
instances. It also shows that nonconsensual touching was the only
category where those who had not been victimized were the minor-
ity. Among those who endorsed an “other”type of violation under
the Passivity category, the most reported violation by digital penetra-
tion, representing 5.5% (n=10) of all those victimized in this
category.
Twelve-Month Victimization Prevalence Rates
Twelve-month prevalence rates were calculated for each category.
As shown in Table 4, nonconsensual touching was most common,
followed by verbal coercion. Overall, 12-month prevalence rates
were calculated by counting only once those who had been victim-
ized within the last 12 months (i.e., a participant who had experi-
enced multiple violations in the last 12 months was only counted
once). This analysis showed 34.9% of participants were subject to
some form of sexual violation in the last 12 months.
Age at First Victimization
The age at first victimization was calculated as a percentage among
those identified as victims within each category. As Table 5 shows, the
Table 1
SEQ: Self-Reported Distress, Shame, Fear, and Uncertainty by Victimization Severity
SEQ item N
Overall distress Shame Fear Uncertainty
M(SD)M(SD)M(SD)M(SD)
Voyeurism 12 5.08 (2.94) 3.75 (4.07) 5.17 (4.17) 5.00 (2.99)
Touching 79 4.49 (2.60) 4.17 (3.37) 4.22 (3.12) 4.66 (3.10)
Verbal coercion 70 5.17 (2.59) 5.23 (3.47) 4.41 (3.32) 5.51 (2.57)
Passivity 123 7.02 (2.35) 7.34 (2.89) 6.00 (3.25) 6.84 (2.75)
Physical coercion 66 7.62 (2.83) 7.62 (3.12) 7.71 (3.07) 7.09 (2.67)
Total 350 6.13 (2.83) 6.14 (3.51) 5.58 (3.46) 6.07 (2.94)
Note. SEQ =sexual encounters questionnaire.
Table 2
SEQ: Victimization Type by Overall Lifetime Frequency and
Percentage
SEQ item NFrequency Percentage
Voyeurism 458 166 36.2
Touching 458 301 65.7
Verbal coercion 458 217 47.4
Passivity 458 182 39.7
Physical coercion 458 66 14.4
Note. SEQ =sexual encounters questionnaire.
CATTON AND DORAHY
4
most common age at first violation was within 14–17, with a small
number being violated before 5 years of age.
Categories of Victimization
An error in programming the SEQ online resulted in inconsistent
responses to follow-up questions about the perpetrator and the tactics
they used, and was discarded. As participants were able to select
more than one perpetrator in the follow-up questions, it was apparent
that some participants answered these questions in reference to all
the perpetrators they were victimized by, and some answered the
question as it was worded: with reference to only the most recent
incident. However, data from those who had only been victimized
once was usable and is available online at https://osf.io/5zfd2/.
Among victims of voyeurism, 9.6% (n=16) were men, 87.4%
(n=145) were women, 1.8% (n=3) were nonbinary, and 1.2%
(n=2) were “other.”An independent samples ttest showed the
rate of victimization (within the full sample) between men and
women to be significant with a small-moderate effect size, t(444) =
−3.55, p,.001, Cohen’sd=−0.42, with women significantly
more likely to be victims of voyeurism. Further, 12.7% (n=21)
stated a recording was used as blackmail, 57.8% (n=96) were not
blackmailed, and 29.5% (n=49) were not recorded.
Among victims of nonconsensual touching, 13.3% (n=40) were
men, 83.4% (n=251) were women, 3% (n=9) were nonbinary,
and 0.3% (n=1) were “other.”An independent samples ttest
between men and women found a significant effect in the medium
range, t(444) =−4.19, p,.001, Cohen’sd=−0.50, with
women more likely to be victimized in this manner.
Within victims of verbal coercion, 12.4% (n=27) were men,
84.3% (n=183) were women, 2.8% (n=6) were nonbinary, and
0.5% (n=1) were “other.”An independent samples ttest found sig-
nificantly higher levels of verbal coercion in women than men with a
medium effect size, t(444) =−3.97, p,.001, Cohen’sd=−0.47.
Among those victimized by being treated as a passive sexual
object, 9.9% (n=18) were men, 86.3% (n=157) were women,
3.3% (n=6) were nonbinary, and 0.5% (n=1) were “other.”
Women were more likely to be exposed to this form of victimization
than men, t(444) =−3.55, p,.001, Cohen’sd=−0.42.
Within victims of physical coercion, 10.6% (n=7) were men,
84.8% (n=56) were women, 3.0% (n=2) were nonbinary, and
1.5% (n=1) were participants who described their gender as
“other.”There was no significant difference across men and
women, t(141.171) =−1.34, p=.18, suggesting that men and
women are equally likely to be physically coerced into sexual acts.
Discussion
The objectives of this study were to develop, administer, and eval-
uate the findings of a broader measure of sexual victimization across
the lifespan. The development of the SEQ overcomes the limitations
of other tools by adopting a broader definition of sexual violation
that includes the experiences of children, men, and those victimized
by women. It also includes acts not typically included in surveys of
this type, such as voyeurism. By omitting gender and age distinc-
tions seen in other surveys, our prevalence rates were higher than
those seen in previous research on sexual violence among university
students. For instance, although Beres et al. (2020) measured victim-
ization that occurred at university, their overall victimization rate of
28% was substantially lower than our rate of 76.9% but is compara-
ble to the 34.9% of those in the present study who had been sexually
victimized in the past 12 months.
However, the lack of psychometric evaluation on the present version
of the SEQ indicates that generalizations drawn from this study may be
premature. Further, several victims of passive violation manually
entered into a textbox that they had been victimized by digital penetra-
tion. This resulted in a revision of the SEQ to include digital and object
penetration. Further, the design of the SEQ on the survey platform
meant that data about perpetration was confounded by some respon-
dents confusing follow-up questions about the most recent violation
only with all violations they had experienced. This was a technical
oversight and the next deployment of the SEQ overcame this problem.
Study 2
As the previous study was part of a larger study on disclosure of
sexual victimization, psychometric evaluation of the SEQ was out-
side the scope of that research. This prompted the need for a study
assessing the psychometric properties of the SEQ. Research evaluat-
ing the validity and reliability of victimization surveys includes
analyses of convergent and discriminant validity. For instance,
Johnson et al. (2017) found that SES scores converged via positive
Table 3
SEQ: Victimization Type by Percentage of Frequency of Experienced
Violation
SEQ item N
Percentage of frequency of experienced violation
0 (%) 1 (%) 2–5 (%) 6–9 (%) 10+(%)
Voyeurism 458 63.8 15.9 16.2 2.8 1.3
Touching 458 34.3 17.9 27.7 9.0 11.1
Verbal coercion 458 52.6 12.2 18.6 6.3 10.3
Passivity 458 60.3 18.6 13.8 2.6 4.8
Physical coercion 458 85.6 9.0 4.4 0.0 1.1
Note. SEQ =sexual encounters questionnaire.
Table 4
SEQ: 12-Month Victimization Prevalence Rates
SEQ item NFrequency Percentage
Voyeurism 458 45 9.8
Touching 458 107 23.4
Verbal coercion 458 71 15.5
Passivity 458 49 10.7
Physical coercion 458 10 2.2
Overall 458 160 34.9
Note. SEQ =sexual encounters questionnaire.
Table 5
SEQ: Age at First Victimization Experience Among Victims
SEQ item N,5 (%) 5–8 (%) 9–13 (%) 14–17 (%) 18+(%)
Voyeurism 166 3.0 7.8 22.9 47.6 18.7
Touching 301 4.3 9.0 18.6 47.2 20.9
Verbal coercion 217 0.9 4.6 11.1 54.8 28.6
Passivity 182 2.7 6.0 13.2 48.9 29.1
Physical coercion 66 0.0 7.6 18.2 36.4 37.9
Note. SEQ =sexual encounters questionnaire.
SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS QUESTIONNAIRE 5
correlations with symptoms of trauma, dissociation, anxiety, and
depression. The SES has also been assessed for convergent validity
among men with the CTS and the childhood trauma questionnaire
(CTQ), finding small-moderate correlations with these measures
(Anderson et al., 2018). Littleton et al. (2019) examined conver-
gent validity by comparing SES findings with respondents’own
written accounts of their sexual victimization, showing only mod-
erate agreement between responses. In sum, establishing conver-
gent validity of sexual victimization surveys is often done with
extant surveys that also assess sexual victimization. While the
CTS surveys different forms of abuse within an intimate relation-
ship, it is restricted to assessing sexual victimization within that
dyad. As such, the CTS was chosen as a measure of convergent
validity with the SEQ. While the CTQ surveys for traumatic expe-
riences including CSA, the aforementioned age limitation of the
perpetrator meant that another survey of CSA was needed. Thus,
the CTES was chosen for this purpose to further aid in establishing
convergent validity with the SEQ as it has no such limitation
(Pennebaker & Susman, 1988), and is regularly used in research
involving childhood trauma (e.g., Schaefer et al., 2018;Tripp
et al., 2022).
Although discriminant validity of sexual victimization surveys is
rarely assessed, Cecil and Matson (2006) compared SES scores to
demographic variables of adolescents such as age and school grades,
finding no relationship with these. For this reason, participants’
political orientation was chosen as a demographic variable to assess
for discriminant validity. As past research has found that survivors of
sexual violence have a fear of intimacy and closeness with others
(e.g., Harris & Valentiner, 2002;Thelen et al., 1998), and that this
may be predicted in part by posttraumatic symptoms (Davis et al.,
2001), fear of intimacy was chosen to helpassess discriminant valid-
ity in the present study. Specifically, it would be expected that sexual
victimization would correlate positively with the degree or severity
of sexual victimization experienced.
Assessing the psychometric properties of the SEQ was the pri-
mary objective of the present study. An auxiliary objective was to
overcome the technical limitations of the previous study around
follow-up questions pertaining to perpetrators and the nature of sex-
ual violation and included digital and object penetration as a select-
able option under the Sexual Passivity category.
Hypothesis 1 (H1): The SEQ would exhibit a moderate-large
correlation with other measures of sexual victimization (revised
conflict tactics scale [CTS2], CTES), thus establishing conver-
gent validity.
Hypothesis 2 (H2): The SEQ would not exhibit any correlation
with participants’political orientation, thus establishing dis-
criminant validity.
Hypothesis 3 (H3): The fear of intimacy scale (FIS) would exhibit
a small positive correlation where those who have been victimized
to the greatest severity would be more likely to have a greater fear
of intimacy.
Method
Participants
One hundred and fifty (N=150) students from a New Zealand
university were recruited for this study. Participants ages ranged
from 17 to 38 years, with a M
age
of 19.41 (SD =3.36). By gender,
131 were women (87.3%), 18 were men (12%), and one (0.7%) iden-
tified as “other.”Regarding ethnicity, 119 (79.3%) identified as
Pakeha/New Zealand European, 11 (7.3%) were New Zealand
Ma
ori, with the remaining identified as other ethnicities. For sexual
orientation, 109 (72.7%) identified as heterosexual, 16 (10.7%) were
bisexual, six (4%) were homosexual, eight (5.3%) were asexual,
with the remaining 11 (7.3%) identifying as “other,”did not
know, or preferred not to state. Fifty-six percent (n=84) identified
as nonpolitical, 32% (n=48) as left leaning/progressive, 8% (n=
12) as right leaning/conservative, 1.3% (n=2) as libertarian, and
2.7% (n=4) selected “other.”Participants received course credit.
Materials
Self-Report Measures
The demographic questionnaire asked participants age, gender,
sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion, political orientation, relation-
ship status, and disability status. The political orientation question
was used to assess for discriminant validity with the SEQ.
CTES-Sexual Experience. The CTES is a screen of five scenar-
ios of traumatic events that occurred prior to the age of 18, with
follow-up questions asking about the age the experience occurred,
how traumatic they would rate the experience on a Likert scale from
1(not at all traumatic)to7(extremely traumatic), and to what degree
they confided in others at the time (Pennebaker & Susman, 1988,
2013). Only the item pertaining to traumatic sexual experiences was
used to assess for convergent validity. As the initial screening question
is dichotomous, internal consistency was not assessed for.
CTS2-Sexual Coercion. The CTS2 is a 78-item questionnaire
surveying both perpetration and victimization of physical, sexual, and
verbal abuse within intimate relationships over the previous 12 months
(Straus et al., 1996). Items are measured by frequency of occurrence on a
Likert scale from 1 (once in the past year)to6(more than 20 times in the
past year), with two additional options “this has never happened”and
“not in the past year, but it did happen before.”Items are scored accord-
ing to the response midpoint, for instance selecting “3–5 times in the past
year”results in a score of 4. Higher summed scores indicate greater con-
flict within a relationship. For this study, only seven items relating to sex-
ual victimization were used (e.g., “My partner made me have sex
without a condom”), which has illustrated high internal consistency in
prior research (Straus et al., 1996).TheCTS2wasusedasameasure
of convergent validity with the SEQ and had a Cronbach’sαof .73 in
this study, indicating acceptable internal consistency
FIS. The FIS is a 35-item questionnaire assessing discomfort and
unease with expressing and receiving intimacy in current and previous
intimate relationships (Descutner & Thelen, 1991). Questions assess
respondents’feelings or attitudes toward intimacy-related experiences
(e.g., “I would probably feel nervous showing “O”strong feelings of
affection”). Responses are placed along a 5-point Likert scale from 1
(not at all characteristic of me)to5(extremely characteristic of me).
Several items are reverse scored, and items are summed with high
scores indicating higher fear of intimacy. The FIS has demonstrated
sound internal consistency and construct validity (Doi & Thelen,
1993). The FIS was used as a measure of discriminant validity and
hadaCronbach’sαof .91, indicating excellent internal consistency.
SEQ. The SEQ was revised to overcome the limitations of the
previous study by including a single choice format for perpetrator
CATTON AND DORAHY6
gender, as well as including digital and object penetration as a tactic.
This version is available in the online supplemental materials.The
Cronbach’sαfor the SEQ in this study was .79, demonstrating accept-
able internal consistency.
Procedure
Participants were recruited within the psychology department
with course credit given to participation in a study entitled “Sexual
Encounters Questionnaire 2023.”Participants were presented with
an internet link to complete the survey which began with an intro-
duction informing them of the nature of the survey questions
involved, and a consent questionnaire. They were then presented
with a demographic questionnaire before being administered the
CTS2, CTES, FIS, and SEQ in randomized order. After this, partic-
ipants were presented with a debrief script informing them of mental
health services available both immediately and by appointment. The
study was approved by the University’s Human Ethics Committee.
Results
Table 6 shows the distribution of scores for the scale measures.
Examining the distribution of scaled scores including SEQ severity,
FIS, and CTS, the CTS exhibited extreme skewness (3.56, SE =
0.20) and kurtosis (13.51, SE =0.39) because of a floor effect. For
this reason, a dichotomous CTS variable was created to indicate
victimization.
Among the sample, 68.7% were identified as victims of a sexual
violation by the SEQ (n=103), 25.3% (n=38) by the CTS, and
24.7% (n=37) from the CTES. Assessing the frequency of digital
and object penetration among the entire sample, 1.3% (n=2)
reported being violated by an object, and 18% (n=27) were vio-
lated by digital penetration. Further information from the SEQ
about victimization and perpetrator data is available online at
https://osf.io/5zfd2/. As most variables were categorical, nonpara-
metric correlations were calculated to examine convergent and dis-
criminant validity.
H1, positing that the SEQ would positively correlate with vic-
timization assessed by CTS2 and CTES, was supported with a
small-moderate correlation with the CTS2 (ρ=.23, p=.01) and
a moderate correlation with the CTES (ρ=−.39, p,.001) in
the expected direction, given how these dichotomous variables
were coded. Although low numbers of participants who had
been victimized in childhood prevented correlation analyses in
the categories of voyeurism and physical coercion, nonparametric
correlations were calculated between age at first victimization
in each SEQ category with the CTES categorial variable, finding
a medium correlation with nonconsensual touching (ρ=.36,
p=.001), and large correlations with verbal coercion (ρ=.45,
p=.001) and passivity (ρ=.67, p,.001). Results support conver-
gent validity.
H2 stated that the SEQ would not correlate with participants’
political orientation, and the resulting correlation analysis supported
this (ρ=.01, p=.89). By SEQ category, only nonconsensual touch-
ing was associated with political orientation, albeit with a small cor-
relation (ρ=.16, p=.047), so the analysis overall demonstrates
discriminant validity.
The third hypothesis stated that the SEQ would exhibit a small
positive correlation with the FIS. The resulting correlational analysis
supported this hypothesis (ρ=.17, p=.04) and further strength-
ened the SEQ’s discriminant validity. This was further tested by cal-
culating a Pearson correlation between the FIS and the SEQ severity
ratings, resulting in a small positive correlation (r=.18, p=.03),
suggesting that being sexually assaulted to a greater degree is asso-
ciated with slightly higher FIS scores.
Discussion
The goal of the present study wasto assess the psychometric prop-
erties of the SEQ. Convergent validity was established with small-
moderate correlations with extant questionnaires screening for sex-
ual victimization. This is consistent with past research on the SES
where correlations with related measures were of a similar magni-
tude among a sample of men (Anderson et al., 2018). That our vic-
timization rate was much higher than the other measures is
attributable to the narrow conceptualization of sexual abuse/assault
in other measures, where the CTS screens for sexual assault within
an intimate relationship, and the CTES only asks about traumatic
events in childhood. The SEQ is designed to be broader in scope
to survey for sexual violation that occurs at any age and within
any interpersonal setting. Discriminant validity was also analyzed
using participant’s political orientation, finding no relationship
with sexual victimization, and with fear of intimacy, finding only
a small correlation with victimization. Further, digital and object
penetration were added to the revised SEQ, with many respondents
reporting these act when they were selectable options, rather than
voluntarily providing this information. This added to the specificity
of the data provided from follow-up questions about acts that perpe-
trators engage in. Information pertaining to the perpetrators gender
and their relationship to the victim was also successfully gathered
in this study and is available online at https://osf.io/5zfd2/.
General Discussion
The objectives of these studies were to develop, administer, and
psychometrically evaluate a novel screening measure of sexual vic-
timization that is more gender inclusive and broader in scope than
extant surveys. Previous estimates of 12-month prevalence rates of
sexual victimization have ranged from 0% to 59.2% depending on
the population being surveyed and the method of survey (Dworkin
et al., 2021). In the present studies, we found 12-month prevalence
rates among university students ranging from 2.2% to 23.4% by cat-
egory, and 34.9% overall. Past research has tended to focus on wom-
en’s experiences of being violated by men, which comes at the
expense of a more complete understanding of sexual victimization.
In Study 1, we found that most men and women had been sexual vio-
lated in their lifetime. However, women were more likely to be vic-
timized than men, and to a greater degree. The only category in
which there was no significant difference in the rates of victimization
was for physical coercion. However, the low number of men in this
category (n= 7) limits the generalizability of this finding. Despite
Table 6
M, SD, and Number of Participants (N) for Scale Measures
Scale NAchieved range Possible range MSD
Conflict tactics scale 150 0–50 0–50 2.75 7.72
FIS 150 43–135 35–135 85.55 22.61
SEQ: severity 150 0–50–5 2.11 1.76
Note. FIS =fear of intimacy scale; SEQ =sexual encounters questionnaire.
SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS QUESTIONNAIRE 7
this, 59.8% of men were identified as victims by the SEQ, which is
higher than estimates using the SES (e.g., Anderson et al., 2018), but
comparable to lifetime prevalence estimates of university men in
research internationally (Dworkin et al., 2021). For example, a
study on Turkish students using a translation of the German
Sexual Aggression and Victimization Scale, found that 65.5% of
men had been victimized since the age of 15 (Schuster et al.,
2016). This speaks to the importance of using survey tools that cap-
ture the range of violations experienced by groups not often included
in research designs. The higher prevalence figures in this study are
also attributable to the development of the SEQ screening questions
in line with recent recommendations of providing specific closed
questions with a broader scaled response format than the SES,
with a moderate number in the middle of the scale (Anderson &
Cuccolo, 2022;Krebs, 2014;Krebs et al., 2021). The scale presented
to participants in the SEQ appears justified, given the decreasing
trend in participants endorsing the 2–5, 6–9, and 10+ frequencies
across all categories of violation. This further adds to the specificity
of data the SEQ provides.
In line with previous distinctions between tactic and act in defin-
ing sexual victimization (Krause et al., 2019), apart from the first two
categories of voyeurism and nonconsensual touching, the SEQ
screens for tactic first where follow-up questions enquire about the
perpetrators gender, relationship to the victim, and the acts they
used to sexually violate the victim. This approach overcomes gender
and age biases in the screening question, by presenting behaviorally
specific tactics first that can be performed by any perpetrator against
any victim, regardless of age and gender. Further, the ordering of
categories was associated with overall distress, shame, fear, and
uncertainty reported by participants who had experienced each
type of violation, except for voyeurism. While self-reported shame
was lowest for those who had only been subjected to an act of voy-
eurism; levels of overall distress, fear, and uncertainty were higher
than what was reported by those who had experienced a violation
in the following category of nonconsensual touching. This may be
explained by the small sample size in that category, but it may
also be explained by the more covert nature of such violations.
Further studies are needed to determine whether more overt forms
of sexual violation such as nonconsensual touching elicit qualita-
tively different levels of distress than covert means such as
voyeurism.
The SEQ also produced data on CSA, with many participants
being victimized prior to the age of 14, and a minority reporting
an occurrence under the age of 5. This is comparable to a study by
Krahe and Berger (2017) that measured CSA among German stu-
dents. They found that 11.4% of women and 8.5% of men were vic-
tims of CSA, as measured by an ad hoc survey asking about
nonconsensual touching, attempted penetration, and actual penetra-
tion by an adult that occurred prior to the age of 14. This is consistent
with the present study, where 3.7%–21% of the total sample were
victimized prior to the age of 14, depending on the category of
violation.
The present research is not without limitations. While Study 2
assessed the psychometric validity of the SEQ, the ability to assess
test-retest reliability was not feasible in the current project. Further
work is needed to investigate the robustness of the SEQ. In addition,
while these studies produced valuable data on sexual victimization
among a student population in New Zealand, the ability to generalize
from these findings about the nature of sexual violence in wider
society is limited because of the young age of many participants.
For instance, the limited number of participants who identified as
nonbinary, “other”gendered, and transgender prevented their inclu-
sion in statistical analyses. Future work would benefit from a thor-
ough assessment of men’s experiences contrasted against women’s
experiences using the SEQ, given the smaller number of males in
the current samples. Furthermore, the experiences of older popula-
tions have not been included in the present research given that the
SEQ was deployed among a sample of students. Further research
may thus benefit from deploying the SEQ across a wider range of
demographic groups. Additionally, although the SEQ makes a dis-
tinction between the direction of genital penetration (i.e., rape and
forced penetration), this distinction was not included in follow-up
questions around oral and anal penetration. This omission was justi-
fied, at the time, for the sake of parsimony and because of sparse lit-
erature on this topic. However, the SEQ may benefit from including
this distinction to be more gender inclusive than it currently is and as
the research on this topic further evolves. Lastly, we understand the
SEQ was designed to overcome some limitations of the SES-R, thus
future studies would benefit from comparing results from both ques-
tionnaires. This was not conducted for Study 2 for the sake of both
parsimony and to avoid overtaxing participants with several con-
fronting questionnaires.
In sum, the SEQ fills an important gap in the literature by provid-
ing a comprehensive screening tool of sexual victimization across
the lifespan. By incorporating a broad range of victimization scenar-
ios presented on a broad frequency scale, the SEQ produces lifetime
prevalence and 12-month prevalence rates that are more likely to
reflect actual rates among students. By screening for specific behav-
iors, the SEQ also omits gender and age biases associated with many
surveys on sexual violence. This highlights the value of the SEQ for
research purposes where victimization rates by gender, age at first
victimization, severity of victimization, and frequency of victimiza-
tion are required to be assessed. As such, the SEQ is a promising tool
that overcomes the limitations of many other tools already available
and widely used.
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510365869
Received July 11, 2023
Revision received January 18, 2024
Accepted February 12, 2024 ▪
CATTON AND DORAHY10
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