NCJ Number
137649
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 7 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1992) Pages: 175-188
Date Published
1992
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This study examined the extent to which assault and participant characteristics influenced medical students' attitudes toward rape and nonsexual-assault victims.
Abstract
Subjects were 215, first-year and third-year medical students at the Medical University of South Carolina in 1982. The questionnaire packets contained hypothetical patient narratives, an attitude measure that consisted of a combined and modified version of Burt's (1980) Rape Myth Acceptance Scale and Field's (1978) Attitude Toward Rape Scale, and a personal information data sheet. The subjects read narratives of three types of patients -- a stereotypical rape victim, a victim of a robbery, and a nonstereotypical rape victim -- and then responded to an attitude questionnaire that focused on the victims in the narratives. Results of a series of analyses of variances show that females had more favorable attitudes toward victims than did the males; however, all of the medical students had more victim-blaming attitudes toward the nonstereotypical rape victim than toward either the stereotypical rape victim or the nonsexual-assault victim. These findings indicate that medical students have personal belief systems that narrowly define rape, regardless of the legal definitions of rape. This may affect the type and amount of care that these students provide to various types of rape victims in the future. Additional education on rape and rape victims is required in the medical curriculum. 1 table, appended study instruments, and 41 references