Background: Schools are important contexts for preventing sexual violence (SV) among adolescents. Evaluating whether programming is effective requires surveying youth about SV experiences. However, school communities often have concerns about asking students, particularly those in middle school, about these experiences. This study sought to…

Background: Sexual violence (SV) is a serious public health concern, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ+) youth report higher rates than their heterosexual and cisgender peers. This qualitative study aimed to understand LGBTQ+ students' perspectives on how middle and high school environments can better prevent…

Background: Youth identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) and/or transgender/gender nonconforming (TGNC) are at increased risk of violence. School policies and practices may mitigate this risk. Methods: Researchers merged data from the 2016 New Mexico School Health Profiles and the 2017 New Mexico Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey. Researchers…

Background: Previous research on associations between early sexual debut and other health risk behaviors has not examined the effect of forced sexual intercourse on those associations. Methods: We analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 19,240 high school students in the United States, age =16 years, to describe the effect of…

Background: Project Connect is a national program to build partnerships among public health agencies and domestic violence services to improve the health care sector response to partner and sexual violence. Pennsylvania piloted the first school nurse-delivered adolescent relationship abuse intervention in the certified school nurses' office…

A number of school-based programs address sexual violence by focusing on adolescents' attitudes about rape or acceptance of rape myths. However, really problems exist in the literature regarding measurement of rape myth acceptance, including issues of reliability and validity. This paper addresses measurement reliability issues and reviews…

Examined adolescent sexuality-education curricula for information on coercion (date rape, stranger rape, pressure, incest, sexual harassment, unwanted/inappropriate touch, and exploitation/victimization). Exploitation/victimization and pressure received the greatest attention. Sexual harassment was not covered in any of the curricula. Results…

High-school male and female students completed a survey on perceptions regarding nonconsensual sexual activity. Females, blacks, and students with low academic achievement were significantly more likely to perceive that all or most of their close friends were having sex. Females were more knowledgeable than males about nonconsensual sexual…

This study examined the relationship between sex role stereotypes of women and eighth graders' beliefs in rape myths. Surveys indicated that both sexes accepted some rape myths and sex role stereotyping of women. There was an association between belief in rape myths and stereotyping. More boys than girls accepted rape myths. (SM)

Assessed junior high students' perceptions regarding nonconsensual sexual activity. Surveys indicated 35% had had sexual intercourse; 19% reported feeling pressure from their friends to have sex; 17% had been sexually coerced by an adolescent, 7% by an adult; 6% reported having sexually coerced someone else. Students demonstrated low knowledge…

The responsibilities of school personnel in detecting and dealing with incest are discussed: (1) knowledge about incestuous behavior; (2) observation and detection; (3) reporting and referrals; (4) counseling and followup; and (5) prevention. (FG)