Female and male undergraduates' attributions for sexual offending against children

This study examined gender differences in undergraduates' attributions for child sex offending. One hundred and sixty-four undergraduates were asked to give the reasons why they think men sexually offend against children and to rate them using Benson's Attributional Scale across four dimensions: stability, locus, controllability and globality. A Grounded Theory methodology was applied to these reasons and a set of nine categories derived from the data. The results showed that undergraduates' reasons for child sexual abuse strongly parallel contemporary scientific theories of abuse, and that there were significant gender differences in the frequency with which participants cited various types of reasons given for sexual abuse. Females endorsed significantly more victim reasons than males, and also more power and control reasons than did males. In contrast, males endorsed significantly more sexual reasons for offending than did females. Furthermore, significant gender differences were found between the ways in which participants construed the reasons for sexual abuse, with females seeing the phenomenon as significantly more stable and internal than males. No significant gender differences were found on the dimensions of controllability and globality.