The right to say no: acceptance of sexual coercion behaviors in young students

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the degree of acceptance of behaviours of sexual coercion among university students. For this purpose 305 students of the University of Salamanca completed anonymously a questionnaire composed by vignettes designed to obtain information about the degree of acceptance of different behaviours of sexual coercion in accordance to variables such as the degree of cooperation of the victim, type of relation between the victim and the perpetrator and the gender of the perpetrator. The results confirm that the most accepted strategies of sexual coercion are physical stimulus and the verbal coercion when the victim manifests some type of cooperation to initiate the sexual encounter and the perpetrator is the partner. The influences of the sexual scripts and gender stereotypes are discussed.