Strategies for College Student Stalking Victims: Examining the Information and Recommendations Available

Abstract

The college population is at a heightened risk for stalking victimization; yet it is suggested that college administrators have ignored stalking while focusing on other types of crimes, such as rape. Therefore, the present study seeks to examine the amount of attention universities are giving stalking as a crime that is a risk for their students. Additionally, this paper considers what types of information, recommendations, and strategies for effective responses to this type of victimization (if any) universities are providing to their students. In order examine university responses to stalking, a sample of Florida universities were observed by searching each university's web page on the Internet. The data obtained from the university websites were analyzed through content analysis. Overall, it does in fact appear that Florida universities are addressing stalking in some manner, and the information they are providing to students is consistent with the current academic research.

Studying similarities and differences in higher education organisations based on their websites – comparative methodological approaches and research potential

“…These articles mainly map differences without any attempt to explain them. Examples of such articles are those that analysed how universities in the USA comply with gender-based violence and anti-stalking regulations, which demand that specific prevention information should be prominently displayed on homepages (Dunlap et al, 2018a ; Lund & Thomas, 2015 ; Truman & Mustaine, 2009 ). In a similar way, articles evaluate policies with regard to website accessibility for people with disabilities (Erickson et al, 2013 ; Jackson & Jones, 2014 ; Solovieva & Bock, 2014 ), institutional policies regarding non-medical use of prescription stimulants in U.S. higher education (Aikins et al, 2017 ), work–life balance and flexible work policies at universities (Tower & Dilks, 2015 ), advice provision for students with mental problems by Australian universities (Laws & Fiedler, 2013 ), and presence of dialogic features at university websites (McAllister, 2012a , 2012b ; Shadinger, 2013 ).…”