Understanding student attitudes to sexual violence at elite UK universities

For over a decade, research has indicated that sexual violence amongst the student population is a sizeable and persistent problem. At present, however, there exists little research concerned with students' attitudes towards sexual behaviour, heterosexuality, and socio-sexual norms more broadly. This thesis begins to fill this gap. This thesis investigates what student attitudes towards sexual violence are in within elite university communities. Then it considers how we can best understand these attitudes in relation to existing socio-sexual norms pertaining to gender and heterosexuality. Finally, it explores the possibilities these attitudes bring in the context of bringing about behavioural change in the elite university environment. Using quantitative data from students across 24 universities and qualitative data generated from fieldwork within three elite university communities, this thesis argues that current understandings and theoretical frameworks found in existing literature over-simplify the problem of sexual violence in universities. It demonstrates the ways in which student attitudes and behaviours are complex, fluid and context specific. It highlights complicated relationship between gendered behaviours and attitudes which has been missing from existing scholarship and current preventative training measures undertaken by institutions. Importantly, it does not seek to provide a new theoretical framing for understanding sexual violence in these communities, but rather highlights the impossibility of utilising a single framework to understand, tackle and prevent the problem. Instead, it advocates for scholars, institutions, and future preventative training measures to account for the nuance and complexity of the attitudes collected and lived experiences of students within the elite university community. The thesis concludes by offering an alternative way of approaching sexual violence prevention in the university context. Although it does not offer a detailed blueprint, the thesis makes clear that elite institutions could, with long-term investment and training provisions driven by student voices and experiences, bring about meaningful behavioural change.