Date of Award

Spring 4-30-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Lynette H. Bikos

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Christine Hutchison

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Thane Erickson

Abstract

Sexual assault is a prevalent public health concern that effects thousands of people every year. How each of these individuals responds is different. There are multiple factors that can impact someone’s response to sexual assault, one of which is resilience, and another is secondary victimization. Legal advocacy programs can be used to help reduce secondary victimization and increase sexual assault coping self-efficacy, while controlling for age and race. This dissertation examines the way that secondary victimization moderates the relationship between resilience and sexual assault coping self-efficacy. Participants were at least 18 years old, a cisgender woman, English speaking, and a clients of a Washington-based legal advocacy program (N = 108). The design of the overall study is longitudinal in nature, but this dissertation only uses data from participants first completed participation. Results found statistically significant effects at the second model of the hierarchical regression, indicating that resilience and secondary victimization have statistically significant impacts on sexual assault coping self-efficacy. When the interaction term was added in model 3, not only was the interaction term not statistically significant, it actually negated the two significant main effects found in model 2. Limitations include a lack of diversity among the sample, and that there was no control group to compare against individuals who did not work with a legal advocate. Future research should focus on increasing diversity, especially amongst populations of individuals at increased risk of sexual assault, and on trainings that reduce secondary victimization.

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