Sexual violence in Higher Education: Prevalence and characteristics of perpetrators

University-based sexual violence is a pervasive public health issue associated with numerous negative, long-term outcomes. Decades of research with victim-survivors have validated claims that one in five women students will be sexually assaulted at university, whilst empirical work into perpetration has concluded that nearly one-third of men who are students will display sexually aggressive behaviours during their studies. Recent media and policy attention has encouraged researchers to be more proactive in assessing the risk and protective factors associated with university-based sexual violence perpetration, to enable the development of more robust harm prevention strategies for those at risk of offending. Subsequently, there is now a broad academic knowledge base pertaining to the causes of students’ harmful sexual behaviours. Current evidence highlights that university-based sexual violence is the product of multiple, interacting levels of influence on individual behaviour