Understanding of Factors Associated with Reporting to the Police, Helping Seeking, and Adopting in Self-protection among Stalking Victims: A Latent Class Analysis.

Victims of stalking use multiple help-seeking behaviors including reporting their experiences to the police, obtaining a restraining order, blocking communication, and relying on informal social networks like friends, family, or therapists. The goal of this study is to, first, identify distinct subgroups of stalking victims based on their help-seeking behaviors. Next, we identify the direct effect of sex, victim-offender relationship, and offense severity on class membership. Finally, we include negative emotions as a mediating effect. Using the 2016 National Crime Victimization Survey's Supplemental Victimization Survey data, latent class analysis was utilized to identify class membership among 1,459 stalking victims. The results indicate three groups: passive help-seekers, informal help-seekers, and active help-seekers. We found that females are more likely to be assigned to the active or informal group and these two groups appear to experience more severe stalking behaviors compared to the passive group. Specifically, victims were less likely to ask for help actively and ask family, friends, and non-professional people for help for whom stalking took place by other/unable to identify individuals. Victims whose stalkers had a criminal record, whose stalkers threatened themselves or others, as well as who suffered stalking lasting for months and the most often were more likely to ask for help actively and ask family, friends, and non-professional people for help. The significance of victims' perceptions of severity of both groups is only partially mediated by negative emotions.

Las víctimas del acoso utilizan diversos comportamientos de búsqueda de ayuda, como denunciar los hechos a la policía, conseguir una orden de alejamiento, bloquear la comunicación o confiar en las redes sociales informales como amigos, familia o terapeutas. El objetivo del estudio es en primer lugar reconocer distintos subgrupos de víctimas de acoso en función de sus comportamientos de búsqueda de ayuda. A continuación observamos el efecto directo en la pertenencia al grupo del sexo, la relación víctima-agresor y la gravedad del delito. Por último, abordamos el efecto mediador de las emociones negativas. Utilizando los datos de la encuesta suplementaria de victimización de la Encuesta Nacional de Delitos de Victimización de 2016 nos servimos del análisis de clases latentes para analizar la afiliación de clase en 1,459 víctimas de acoso. Los resultados muestran tres grupos: buscadores de ayuda pasivos, informales y activos. Resultó que es más probable que las mujeres sean asignadas al grupo activo o informal y que estos dos grupos parecen experimentar comportamientos de acoso más graves en comparación con el grupo pasivo. En concreto era menos probable que las víctimas pidieran ayuda activamente y a la familia, amigos y personas no profesionales que habían sufrido acoso por parte de otras personas incapaces de identificar. Era más probable que las víctimas cuyos acosadores tenían antecedentes penales y les habían acosado a ellos o a otras personas y cuyo acoso había durado meses y más a menudo pidieran ayuda activa y también a la familia, amigos y personas no profesionales. La importancia de cómo percibían la gravedad ambos grupos solo estaba mediatizada en parte por las emociones negativas.

Medicalized addiction, self-medication, or nonmedical prescription drug use? How trust figures into incarcerated women's conceptualization of illicit prescription drug use.

Trust is crucial to optimal care. When trust is compromised, patients, doctors, and others involved in the provision of health care may not act in patients' best interests, particularly when dealing with prescription (Rx) drugs. Patients must trust that doctors are giving them the proper treatment, including access to Rx drugs only when medically necessary. They must also trust themselves to use these drugs properly. Likewise, doctors must trust the patient's ability to use medications appropriately. Given the recent rise in illicit Rx drug use in the U.S., we seek to understand how women articulate levels of trust in doctors and themselves and if different combinations of trust and distrust impact how they acquire, use, and articulate their experiences with Rx drugs. To this end, we identified and interviewed 40 women incarcerated in the U.S., who were deeply entrenched in illicit Rx drug use prior to prison. Based upon this research, we argue that illicit Rx drug use may be tied to different combinations of trust and distrust in individual doctors (interpersonal trust), the field of medicine (institutional trust), and the users themselves (self trust). How these women acquire Rx drugs: through doctors, friends, family, or the street market are influenced by combinations of interpersonal, institutional, and self trust.

Revealing Victimization: The Impact of Methodological Features in the National Crime Victimization Survey.

This study examines the impact of methodological features of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) on respondent willingness to report violent, serious violent, and property victimizations to the NCVS. Bounded and unbounded data from the 1999-2005 NCVS are used to create a longitudinal file of respondents, and survey-weighted logistic regression models are used to assess the factors associated with the reporting of victimization. Net of sociodemographic control variables, unbounded interviews produced higher estimates of serious violence (72%), violence (66%), and property victimization (67%). Mobile respondents reported higher estimates than nonmobile respondents of serious violence (48%), violence (35%), and property victimization (15%). Compared with in-person interviews, interviewing by telephone increased reporting for serious violence (7%), violence (12%), and property victimization (17%). This study highlights the importance of controlling for these factors in both longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses to estimate victimization risk.

Why Definitions Matter: Stalking Victimization in the United States.

Although there is a growing understanding of stalking victimization, it remains difficult to define, and characterizations of the phenomenon vary within the literature. As such, research is needed to understand how variations in the definition of stalking may change who is defined as a victim and thereby limit the generalizability of findings across previous studies. The focus of this study is the inclusion or exclusion of subjective and reasonable measures of fear for 1,430 victims identified by the 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey. Results suggest that the definition of stalking is important, and prior research has potentially excluded stalking victims due to restrictive operationalizations. Victims who report different types of fear appear to be similar to each other in some respects but differ in others, particularly with regard for gender representation, suggesting some definitions of stalking may be gendered and under-represent male stalking victims. Finally, using complex stratified survey weights, the impact of these varying operationalizations is examined. Using the same data but different definitions resulted in estimates of just over 1 to 5.3 million persons who are stalked in the United States each year.