Scale for the identification of acquaintance rape attitudes: Reliability and factorial invariance

Within the context of intimate interpersonal relationships, gender-based violence has a significant impact on the social-emotional functioning and development of women. Our ability to determine the effectiveness of our efforts to reduce sexual violence is linked to our ability to assess those attitudes that condone sexual violence. This study examined the validity of college students' responses to the Scale for the Identification of Acquaintance Rape Attitudes (SIARA). The Scale for the Identification of Acquaintance Rape Attitudes is a measure designed to assess attitudes that are believed to be supportive of sexual violence within dating relationships. The sample consisted of 1,782 residential students in the first year class at a large, public university who participated in a sexual assault prevention program as part of a new student orientation. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated that two dimensions, Sexual Expectations and Rape Mythology, could be used to characterize students' responses. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis and mean structure analysis confirmed that the two dimensions provided equivalent measurements of the underlying construct for male and female subjects. Implications for the use of SIARA as a program outcome measure will be discussed.