Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, and Experiences With Sexual Violence–Model Inventory

1. Abstract

The Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, and Experiences With Sexual Violence–Model Inventory (DRA-RM-ESV-M; Boateng et al., 2023) is a comprehensive, multidimensional psychometric instrument formulated to evaluate the complex cognitive, normative, and experiential dynamics linking interpersonal sexual violence victimization with cognitive rationalizations of acquaintance and date rape. Originating from an empirical investigation assessing university students in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), this 16-item measurement battery synthesizes and adapts seminal conceptual frameworks established by Lanier and Elliott (1997) and Lonsway and Fitzgerald (1994) to address institutional, social, and structural realities within developing and non-Western educational environments.

The complete instrument is structurally organized into three broad psychological and behavioral domains divided into four distinct empirical subscales: College Date Rape Attitudes (4 items), Rape Myths (4 items), and Experiences With Sexual Violence, which bifurcates into Sexual Harassment (4 items) and Sexual Assault (4 items). The inventory employs hybrid metric scaling: date rape attitude items are indexed along a 5-point Likert-type spectrum ranging from 1 (Strongly Agree) to 5 (Strongly Disagree), while rape myth acceptance items are evaluated on a 7-point Likert-type continuum from 1 (Not at all agree) to 7 (Very much agree). Experiential victimization items gauge self-reported frequencies of boundary violations and physical coercion. Psychometric evaluation of the instrument demonstrates robust properties within higher-education cohorts; exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses report cumulative variance explained values of 56% for both date rape attitudes and rape myths, 51% for sexual harassment, and 61% for sexual assault. Internal consistency indices (Cronbach’s alpha) range from adequate to strong: α = 0.73 for College Date Rape Attitudes, α = 0.73 for Rape Myths, α = 0.74 for Sexual Harassment, and α = 0.67 for Sexual Assault. This instrument serves as an indispensable forensic, public health, and sociological inventory for modeling sexual victimization pathways and targeting anti-violence interventions in campus populations globally.

2. Keywords

Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Acquaintance Rape, Victim Blaming, Sexual Violence Measurement, Forensic Assessment, Criminological Psychology, Psychometrics, Structural Equation Modeling, Campus Sexual Misconduct

3. Authors

The Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, and Experiences With Sexual Violence–Model Inventory was established and empirically evaluated by an interdisciplinary consortium of criminologists, behavioral scientists, and forensic investigators:

• Francis D. Boateng, Ph.D. — Department of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, University of Mississippi, University Park, Mississippi, United States. ORCID: 0000-0001-8411-271X. Email: [email protected].
• Nabi Youla Doumbia, Ph.D. — Department (UFR) of Criminology, Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
• Bassey Kooffreh, M.S. — Department of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, University of Mississippi, University Park, Mississippi, United States.
• Charlotte Omane Kwakye-Nuako, Ph.D. — Department of Forensic Science, University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana. ORCID: 0000-0002-6397-094X.

4. Purpose

The fundamental objective of the Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, and Experiences With Sexual Violence–Model Inventory is to capture and statistically untangle the bidirectional influences operating between direct personal victimization (manifested across non-physical sexual harassment and physical sexual assault) and cognitive schemas regarding sexual consent, normative dating behavior, and victim responsibility. Historically, psychometric inventories addressing rape myth acceptance and dating scripts were constructed and standardized almost exclusively within high-income Western universities, particularly across North American cohorts. Consequently, standard instruments often failed to capture the sociological nuances, gender-role rigidities, and structural conditions present in non-Western, transitioning post-colonial settings.

In response to these diagnostic and epidemiological gaps, Boateng and colleagues (2023) developed this modeling inventory to examine how victimization experiences alter or reinforce internalized cognitive biases among university students in West Africa. From a forensic and clinical psychology vantage point, understanding whether prior victimization leads to increased adherence to rape myths (e.g., self-blame as a maladaptive cognitive defense mechanism to regain an illusion of control) or diminishes myth acceptance through acute trauma awareness is paramount. Criminologists and institutional policy makers utilize the scale to conduct campus-wide climate assessments, evaluate the efficacy of primary prevention curricula, and examine the psychosocial sequelae of gender-based violence. By providing distinct, psychometrically parsed indicators for both subtle harassment and overt physical penetration or coercion, alongside nuanced measures of dating expectations and cognitive rationalizations, the DRA-RM-ESV-M serves both diagnostic research purposes and predictive risk-assessment modeling within institutional settings.

5. Psychological Construct

The inventory operationalizes a complex latent architecture comprising three interrelated theoretical dimensions, systematically organized into four empirically confirmed psychometric subconstructs:

1. College Date Rape Attitudes

This construct examines internalized normative expectations, behavioral scripts, and entitlement assumptions surrounding modern collegiate dating. Grounded psychometrically in the earlier acquaintance rape scales of Lanier and Elliott (1997), this subscale assesses the cognitive attribution of sexual consent based purely on non-explicit dating interactions. It captures problematic heuristic shortcuts wherein social initiatives (such as a female asking a male on a date), domestic entry (accompanying an acquaintance to a private residence), or sartorial choices (wearing form-fitting or revealing attire) are perceived as non-verbal contracts mandating sexual capitulation. High endorsement reflects rigid date-rape-supportive beliefs and a propensity to diminish female sexual autonomy within romantic contexts.

2. Rape Myths

Adapting the foundational conceptualization formulated by Lonsway and Fitzgerald (1994), this subscale captures pervasive, stereotypical, or false cognitive beliefs about rape, rapists, and rape survivors. These schemas serve to justify male sexual aggression, create ambiguous conditions around non-consent, and delegitimize genuine victim trauma. The specific items measure beliefs regarding survivor fabrication, the minimization of psychological trauma, accusations of survivor provocation via wardrobe choices, and the attribution of ambiguous communication to female dissent (e.g., asserting that female resistance is disingenuous or playfully reticent).

3. Sexual Harassment (Experiences With Sexual Violence)

This experiential behavioral dimension evaluates personal exposure to pervasive, non-consensual verbal, visual, or environmental sexual misconduct. It encapsulates insidious interpersonal behaviors that fall short of forced physical penetration but constitute an environment of intimidation, gender hostility, and unwanted sexual pursuit within university contexts.

4. Sexual Assault (Experiences With Sexual Violence)

In contrast to verbal and environmental hostility, the sexual assault construct measures direct, invasive physical violations. This includes completed or attempted forced sexual contact, non-consensual physical touching, digital or penile penetration, and coercive sexual violations obtained through force, threat of physical violence, institutional leverage, or chemical/alcohol incapacitation.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, and Experiences With Sexual Violence–Model Inventory is constructed upon an integration of three major paradigms within social psychology, criminology, and feminist theory: Sexual Script Theory, Cognitive Dissonance / Just-World Beliefs, and Routine Activity / Lifestyle Theory.

Sexual Script Theory

Originally formulated by Gagnon and Simon (1973), Sexual Script Theory asserts that human sexual behavior is neither strictly instinctive nor biologically pre-programmed; rather, it is directed by culturally transmitted guidelines that prescribe how, when, why, and with whom individuals engage sexually. In collegiate dating environments, cultural scripts frequently embed asymmetric gender expectations: men are socially conditioned to act as sexual initiators who persist past initial resistance, whereas women are socialized into roles of gatekeeping or passive compliance. The College Date Rape Attitudes component of the inventory isolates scripts that interpret casual dating milestones (e.g., entering private quarters, wearing attractive clothing) as explicit sexual consent, providing a direct metric of script rigidity.

The Just-World Hypothesis and Cognitive Dissonance

The Rape Myths dimension is theoretically underpinned by Lerner’s Just-World Hypothesis (1980) and Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory (1957). Lerner’s framework suggests that individuals possess an inherent psychological drive to believe that the world is inherently fair, orderly, and predictable, where individuals experience outcomes congruent with their behavior. When exposed to reports or threats of catastrophic violence like rape, observers experience intense psychological dissonance: if rape can happen to innocent individuals arbitrarily, the observer is likewise vulnerable. To preserve the illusion of a benevolent universe, individuals generate and adopt rape myths—concluding that victims must have acted provocatively, miscommunicated, or invited the assault. By attributing blame to the survivor’s lifestyle, apparel, or communication style, the observer cognitively restores perceptual control.

Routine Activity and Lifestyle Exposure Frameworks

The behavioral inclusion of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault draws from Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo’s (1978) Lifestyle-Exposure Theory and Cohen and Felson’s (1979) Routine Activity Theory. These criminological frameworks suggest that structured collegiate environments place students in repeated, informal proximity to potential offenders in low-guardianship settings. By conjoining behavioral exposure measures with attitudinal assessments, the DRA-RM-ESV-M enables structural equation modeling to verify whether interpersonal victimization shatters naive cognitive illusions (decreasing rape myths) or conversely prompts heightened psychological defense through internalized victim-blaming schemas.

7. Validity

The DRA-RM-ESV-M has demonstrated rigorous psychometric validity across empirical cross-sectional evaluations conducted in African university populations:

• Content and Face Validity: The battery was developed by adapting authenticated items from established instruments, most notably the acquaintance rape assessments of Lanier and Elliott (1997) and the Rape Myth Acceptance scale (IRMAS) by Lonsway and Fitzgerald (1994). Cross-cultural harmonization was executed via expert panel review among forensic and criminological scholars at both the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny and the University of Mississippi to preserve linguistic appropriateness and semantic equivalence for collegiate respondents.
• Construct and Factorial Validity: Construct validity was thoroughly evaluated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic approaches. As documented by Boateng et al. (2023), each hypothesized dimension emerged with clean orthogonal and oblique factor separations without excessive cross-loadings. The extracted factors aligned seamlessly with the distinct theoretical dimensions: College Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, Sexual Harassment, and Sexual Assault.
• Convergent and Discriminant Validity: Although formalized multivariant average variance extracted (AVE) indices were not reported in preliminary validation phases, convergent validity was established via statistically significant bivariate correlations among related dimensions: individuals demonstrating elevated adherence to rape myths exhibited correspondingly high date-rape-supportive attitudes. Discriminant validity between Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault was verified through empirical factor divergence, validating that non-physical environmental violations represent an empirically distinct construct from invasive physical sexual violations.
• Criterion-Related and Predictive Validity: The scale demonstrated robust predictive utility within structural equation models, confirming that differential exposures to campus sexual harassment significantly predict subsequent modifications in normative date rape beliefs and adherence to rape myths.

8. Reliability

Empirical assessment of the Date Rape Attitudes, Rape Myths, and Experiences With Sexual Violence–Model Inventory indicates satisfactory to robust internal consistency across all primary subscales. Within the baseline empirical validation study comprising college students aged 17 to 36 years (Boateng et al., 2023), the following reliability coefficients were observed:

• College Date Rape Attitudes Subscale: Cronbach’s α = 0.73. This level of internal consistency indicates strong homogeneity among the items measuring dating expectations, sexual entitlement, and sartorial blame attribution.
• Rape Myths Subscale: Cronbach’s α = 0.73. This coefficient demonstrates reliable consistency across items assessing trauma exaggeration, communicative ambiguity, and provocative wardrobe attribution.
• Sexual Harassment Subscale: Cronbach’s α = 0.74. Reflects consistent reporting across varying non-contact sexually aggressive and hostile environmental behaviors.
• Sexual Assault Subscale: Cronbach’s α = 0.67. Although slightly below the conventional 0.70 benchmark, an alpha of 0.67 is deemed acceptable within criminological and behavioral research for low-base-rate, highly sensitive experiential scales assessing illicit interpersonal physical violence.

Test-retest stability data have not yet been formally established over longitudinal intervals due to the cross-sectional administration parameters of initial campus deployments. However, inter-item reliability indicators verify that the instrument’s component items reliably converge on their respective target constructs.

9. Factor Analysis

Psychometric structural confirmation for the DRA-RM-ESV-M was executed via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) complemented by structural equation modeling (SEM). The structural findings empirically corroborated the multidimensionality of the inventory:

• Attitudinal Dimensions: Factor analysis performed on the cognitive domains demonstrated that the College Date Rape Attitudes subscale accounted for a cumulative total variance explained of 56%. Concurrently, the Rape Myths construct independently demonstrated an identical cumulative total variance explained of 56%. Eigenvalues for these principal attitudinal components exceeded the standard Kaiser-Guttman criterion threshold of 1.0, with scree plots confirming distinct, non-overlapping factor boundaries.
• Experiential Sexual Violence Dimensions: Factor analysis of the broader sexual violence items confirmed a bifurcated model structure: items systematically separated into two distinct latent subscales rather than a single generalized violence dimension. The Sexual Harassment component extracted a cumulative total variance explained of 51%, while the more invasive Sexual Assault component captured a cumulative total variance explained of 61%.
• Item Loadings and Model Fit: Individual item factor loadings for the subscales met standard psychometric thresholds (salient loadings > 0.40). Within structural equation model evaluations, the measurement model demonstrated acceptable goodness-of-fit metrics, supporting the instrument’s capacity to differentiate between cognitive dating scripts, generalized myth rationalizations, and explicit victimization modalities.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Multidimensional Psychometric Self-Report Inventory / Forensic Behavioral Assessment.
• Format: Structured questionnaire battery combining 5-point and 7-point Likert scales alongside categorical/frequency-based victimization indices. Designed for anonymous paper-and-pencil or computerized self-administration.
• Item Count: 16 items distributed across four core functional subscales (4 items per dimension).
• Subscales:
  • College Date Rape Attitudes (4 items)
  • Rape Myths (4 items)
  • Sexual Harassment (4 items)
  • Sexual Assault (4 items)
• Response Scales:
  • College Date Rape Attitudes: 5-point Likert scale:
    • 1 = Strongly Agree
    • 2 = Agree
    • 3 = Neutral / Undecided
    • 4 = Disagree
    • 5 = Strongly Disagree
  • Rape Myths: 7-point Likert scale:
    • 1 = Not at all agree
    • 2 = Disagree strongly
    • 3 = Disagree somewhat
    • 4 = Neutral / Neither agree nor disagree
    • 5 = Agree somewhat
    • 6 = Agree strongly
    • 7 = Very much agree
  • Experiences With Sexual Violence: Evaluated based on self-reported occurrence and behavioral frequency indices.
• Scoring and Interpretation Procedures:
  • For attitudinal subscales, items can be analyzed as individual operational indicators or summed/averaged into mean composite dimension scores.
  • Directionality Note: Researchers must pay careful attention to scale directionality during scoring. On the College Date Rape Attitudes scale, lower numerical scores (e.g., 1 = Strongly Agree) reflect higher endorsement of date rape scripts, unless items are reverse-coded prior to composite analysis. On the Rape Myths scale, higher numerical scores (e.g., 7 = Very much agree) indicate greater acceptance of rape myths.
  • The Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault subscales are scored categorically (presence vs. absence of event) or continuously (cumulative frequency of violent experiences).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Test Publication Year: 2023.
• Fee: Free for non-commercial academic, educational, and research investigations.
• Commercial Use: Non-commercial; commercial distribution or proprietary reproduction is prohibited without prior formal authorization.
• Permissions & Inquiries: The instrument is documented in the peer-reviewed literature. Researchers seeking institutional adaptation, clinical deployment, or cross-cultural translation permissions should contact the corresponding author: Dr. Francis D. Boateng, Department of Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, University of Mississippi, University Park, MS 38677, USA (Email: [email protected]) or request permissions through the publisher, Taylor & Francis Group.

12. References

• Boateng, F. D., Doumbia, N. Y., Kooffreh, B., & Kwakye-Nuako, C. O. (2023). Relationship between date rape attitudes, rape myths and experiences with sexual violence among Ivorian college students. Journal of School Violence, 22(2), 290–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/15388220.2023.2180747
• Cohen, L. E., & Felson, M. (1979). Social change and crime rate trends: A routine activity approach. American Sociological Review, 44(4), 588–608. https://doi.org/10.2307/2094589
• Festinger, L. (1957). A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford University Press.
• Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality. Aldine Publishing.
• Hindelang, M. J., Gottfredson, M. R., & Garofalo, J. (1978). Victims of Personal Crime: An Empirical Foundation for a Theory of Personal Victimization. Ballinger.
• Lanier, C. A., & Elliott, M. N. (1997). Investigating date rape attitudes among high school and college students: Dilemma of the subtle scale. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 12(4), 536–549. https://doi.org/10.1177/088626097012004001
• Lerner, M. J. (1980). The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0448-5
• Lonsway, K. A., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (1994). Rape myths: In review. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(2), 133–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1994.tb00448.x

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)