Blame, Control, or Responsibility? Validation of Sexual Assault Culpability Measures

Abstract

Sexual assault research would benefit from a self-report measure that assesses the extent to which perpetrators and victims are perceived to be culpable for the occurrence of a rape. The goal of this study, therefore, was to develop and validate new measures devised to capture the key facets of victim and perpetrator culpability — blame, control, and responsibility. Psychometric and descriptive properties of the new scales were examined in a sample of UK community participants assessed online (N=255). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using the lavaan package in the statistical software environment R. Both of the final scales demonstrated good validity and reliability. Specifically, internal consistencies for all subscales ranged from acceptable to excellent; CFA supported the hypothesised 3-factor scale structures; and, items exhibited good factor loadings onto respective subscales for both victim (n = 11) and perpetrator (n = 10) culpability. The culpability measures will likely be of use to researchers interested in a detailed, reliable, and valid assessment of victim and perpetrator culpability.

Modern Rape Myths: Justifying Victim and Perpetrator Blame in Sexual Violence

“…It was measured with items from Sexual Assault Culpability Measures (CFA) scales proposed by Persson and Dhingra [36]. The first one assesses blame attributed to a woman and the second one to a man, in a fictional account of a woman's rape.…”