The Global Prevalence of Sexual Assault: A Systematic Review of International Research Since 2010

We present a review of peer-reviewed English-language studies conducted outside the United States and Canada on the prevalence of sexual assault victimization in adolescence and adulthood published since 2010.

A systematic literature search yielded 32 articles reporting on 45 studies from 29 countries. Studies that only provided prevalence estimates for sexual assault in intimate relationships or did not present separate rates for men and women were excluded. All studies were coded by two coders, and a risk of bias score was calculated for each study. Both past-year and prevalence rates covering longer periods were extracted.

The largest number of studies came from Europe (n=21), followed by Africa (n=11), Asia and Latin America (n=6 each). One study came from the Middle East and no studies were found from Oceania. Across the 22 studies that reported past-year prevalence rates, figures ranged from 0% to 59.2% for women, 0.3% to 55.5% for men, and 1.5% to 18.2% for LGBT samples. The average risk of bias score was 5.7 out of 10. Studies varied widely in methodology.

Despite regional variation, most studies indicate that sexual assault is widespread. More sustained, systematic, and coordinated research efforts are needed to gauge the scale of sexual assault in different parts of the world and to develop prevention measures.