From criminal psychology and victimology perspectives, many of the characteristics presented in this study play an important role in understanding the violence victimization and the phenomenon of stalking. These key variables in research, such as the victim's relationship with the stalker, the prolonged duration of stalking, and the behavioral patterns of stalking, can be considered as central concepts in defining and capturing the nature of stalking, which in turn are connected to the legal aspects of stalking. Furthermore, some of the presented main characteristics and features of stalking and violence victimization are distinct, while some overlapping as demonstrated via the conceptual frame of interpersonal violence (p. 12) in the introduction section of this thesis.
Research has classified violent behavior and victim/offender characteristics in order to assort complex behaviors into more manageable and understandable information (Bartol &
Bartol, 2008). This systematic classification of different types of violent behavior (e.g.
stalking) into typologies has been designed for use in different disciplines and as such varies in their aims and scope (Sheridan & Boon, 2002). Although typologies have been criticized for not being finite theories, they have advanced our theoretical knowledge of stalking and produced useful information on how to deal with it (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2007). Furthermore, even if typologies are valuable in bringing into light the complexity of human motives and behavior they have also been criticized for failing to account sufficiently for the overlap between categories, i.e. the heterogeneity of the population (Bartol & Bartol, 2008). The present study aimed to empirically find distinct stalking behavior subtypes and managed to find five distinct victim subgroups based on three stalking behavior dimensions. This methodological perspective (person-centered vs. traditional variable focused analysis) holds interesting opportunities for further discussion, development and theory testing within criminal psychology and victimology (see implications section of this work).
Routine activity theory provides a theoretical frame for understanding the characteristics and typologies related to victimization in a larger context. It suggests that the social context of crime is the core issue in understanding violent and criminal events where the likelihood of crime occurring is closely related to the interaction of suitable targets, motivated offenders, and the absence of capable guardians (Fisher et al., 1998, 2002; Mustaine & Tewksbury, 1999; Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2003). In the light of routine activity theory and related research, university/college students seem to hold demographic characteristics and
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routine activities which make them easy targets for crime and may potentially enhance their risk of experiencing victimization (Fisher et al., 2002; Mustaine & Tewksbury, 1999). In the present study, the above mentioned three factors may be seen as interacting in a situation where the victim knows his/her stalker or offender (i.e. target attractiveness and motivated offender) and the victims were exposed to stalking via telephone or e-mail (absence of capable guardian, in this case, due to electronic communications). Furthermore, according to the Finnish student health survey (Kunttu & Huttunen, 2005), a considerable amount of Finnish university students work alongside with their studies and live either alone or with a partner, which can also be seen as potential factors predisposing to stalking. Moreover, these lifestyle characteristics and routine activities could at least partially explain the high prevalence rates of the present study.
Stress and coping theory provides a theoretical perspective for understanding the reactions and adaptation to victimization. From the stress and coping perspective the probability of illness, injury, disease, psychological distress or disorder will increase if an individual's abilities to cope are exceeded (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). With regard to theory and prior research victimization holds a strong potential to exceed a person’s resources and to endanger the person’s health and well-being. Thus, the symptoms experienced by the victims can be seen as a potential indication of the psychological stress the victims suffer (Janoff-Bulman &
Frieze, 1983). In the present study violence victimization was found to be associated with frequent health care use and mental health symptoms and alcohol consumption indicating potential victimization related stress, keeping however in mind the restrictions of the present study design.
In attempt to offer victims of stalking/violence effective coping strategies, we must understand the cognitive processes that intervene between the stressful event (i.e.
victimization) and the victims’ adaptation (Green & Roberts, 2008). Stress and coping theory (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) offer a frame not only to understand how people try to deal with a stressful encounter, but also but also how they evaluate it. The present study results support theory and research regarding the assumptions that coping effort includes both problem-focused and emotion-problem-focused strategies. Problem-problem-focused coping has been seen as more probable when situations are appraised as changeable, while emotion focused has been more likely to occur when there has been an appraisal that nothing can be done. Stalking as a phenomenon can be considered as a situation which is difficult to change, however both strategies were used. Even if there is an ongoing debate of the superiority of problem-focused versus emotion-focused coping on well-being, the theory assumes no hierarchy of the strategy
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adaptiveness as such, but emphasizes the importance of the fit between the strategy and the situation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). It has been suggested that the emotional consequences depend on how well the strategies chosen match the situational demands, e.g. if the situation is perceived as controllable, problem-focused strategies are more likely to promote well being, while emotion-focused coping is more likely to have positive outcomes in situation which are perceived as unchangeable (Folkman et al., 1986). The importance of the appraisal process in coping has also been acknowledged in theory, research and clinical implications regarding victimization, as it is through the appraisal process that the victim evaluates the impact of the victimization on his/her well-being (Green & Roberts, 2008). Therefore, it might be important in the light of victimization theory, research and clinical implications to pay more attention to the appraisal process and finding the "right fit" between coping and situational demands than to search for the "right strategy".
The stress and coping theory has acknowledged the importance of people's basic belief and assumptions about the world (meaning making) in people's adjustment to traumatic experiences, e.g. victimization (Lazarus, 1993; Park & Folkman, 1997). Thus, once victimized, the victim has to cope not only with the consequences of the victimization itself but also with the loss of his/her beliefs in a controllable world that makes sense (Frieze, Hymer, Greenberg, 1987; Janoff-Bulman & Frieze, 1983). The world assumption model states that victimizing life events challenge several basic beliefs/assumptions of oneself and the world: the belief in a meaningful and orderly world, the belief in a safe world and personal invulnerability, and self-worthiness, weaving one-self in a positive light (Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Janoff-Bulman & Frieze, 1983). Thus, as already acknowledged by coping theorists, the world assumptions model enriches the stress and coping framework with regard to beliefs and meaning in the process through which people appraise and cope with stressful events (Lazarus, 1993; Park & Folkman, 1997), such as victimization. For example, in the present study, the more violent the act, and/or the closer the actor was to the victim, the more it seemed to trigger a search for meaning as a response (e.g. positive reappraisal and accepting responsibility), which may at first appear as contradictory or even damaging. However, in the light of the presented framework, these strategies can be seen as anticipated and a part of the victim’s meaning making process, i.e. a potentially adaptive process, where the victim tries to rebuild a valid and more comprehensible assumptive world by evaluating his/her own role in the victimization process and thereby regain control.
70 5.4 Methodological considerations
The present study provides firsthand information on university students’ experiences of stalking and violence victimization. This is to our knowledge the first empirical study on stalking and the effects of violence on health among university students in Northern Europe.
As a whole, one of the main strengths of the two datasets was that they allowed the use of large samples, including both male and female participants. Regarding the individual substudies, the violence victimization data, consisting of a large sample of university students with the large set questions concerning health allowed multiple comparisons between gender, symptoms associated with violence, and health care usage. Furthermore, the violence victimization sample well represented the original nationally representative sample (Student Health Survey 2004 sample). One of the strengths regarding the stalking substudies is that the stalking studies aimed to focus on the predictive value of stalking behaviors, regarding stalking violence and stalking duration for example, rather than focusing on the victim and stalker demographics. Thus, the present stalking study aimed to go beyond clustering stalking behavior by analyzing the underlying, latent subgroups of stalking behavior. Furthermore, analyzing the risk factors of violence has been one of the main concerns of stalking research.
Yet, it is only recently that stalking research has started to explore other potential risks than the risk for violence, such as stalking duration. As stated earlier in the literature review, with persistence as one of the key concepts in stalking, it is surprising that the duration of stalking has been rather unexplored both theoretically as a concept and empirically. The present study duration found several significant associations between stalking duration and certain core variables of stalking. Furthermore, the present stalking study did not focus on stalking solely in an intimate relationship context. The findings of the present study showed that the clear majority of stalkers were acquaintances, which was in line with a few previous studies (Amar, 2006; Jordan et al., 2007; Spitzberg & Rhea, 1999). This finding calls into question the methodological choices of future studies as the majority of previous studies have focused on intimate partner stalking also in student populations. This finding might be important especially regarding the methodological choices of future studies on stalking risk factors.
Furthermore, as the victim-stalker relationship has been one of the most robust predictors for violent stalking, it was also adopted as a core variable (i.e. victim-offender relationship) to the general violence context resulting in several significant findings. Regarding coping with stalking, the implementation of coping strategies gave broader methodological possibilities to
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analyze the relationship between coping and stalking complemented with the more descriptive information of stalking behavior.
There are some limitations in the present studies. First, the results are based on retrospective self-reports in which memory distortions may occur. Second, the respondents could choose whether or not to take part in the study due to their experience of violence, which could affect the prevalence rates. Second, the respondents were provided with several alternatives representing various stalking behaviors. Yet, it is possible that some behaviors that they had in fact experienced were missing from the list. Also a large number of items completed by the respondents could have produced undesirable response sets. Third, the electronic questionnaire (Studies I - III) made it difficult to obtain an accurate response rate, as it was not possible to estimate the exact amount of non-students on the lists provided by student associations. Furthermore, due to the large sample and the fact that students often change their address, it is not possible to know how many persons in fact received the questionnaire either electronically by e-mail (Studies I – III) or by ordinary mail (Study VI).
Finally, the results are based on a university population, and due to the level of education along with age and gender (a relatively small sample of men) bias, the results cannot be generalized to the general public. Also, due to the cross-sectional study design, causal conclusions cannot be drawn and the observed associations have to be interpreted with caution. Lastly, one of the studies (Study II) provides robust information on one specific episode of stalking, which is in fact a benefit, but at the same time a direct comparison concerning incidence rates should be conducted with caution, as most of the prior studies have not differentiated between one vs. multiple stalking episodes. As a whole, measuring and comparing prevalence is generally problematic as some of the reported rates have different time frames for prevalence, use different definitions for stalking and violence or include different types of behaviors.
5.5 Conclusions and implications for future research and clinical practice
Violence and stalking victimization are large-scale social problems across both adult and student populations, which are mostly reported by English-speaking, westernized developed countries (Meloy, 2007). The present thesis offers some firsthand results showing that stalking, along with violence victimization and related health issues, are markedly prevalent
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also among Finnish university students. These findings may be both useful and challenging for public policy and health care: how do youth violence prevention measures and the student health care sector respond? Thus, these findings aim to assist implications for clinical practice and public policy by providing useful information regarding stalking and violence victimization among university students.
Furthermore, the purpose of studying violence, whether it be stalking violence or general violence, is to contribute to its prevention. Such study and work is still at an early stage, especially regarding stalking. Studies on the risk factors of stalking violence have been criticized for a lack of statistical power due, for example, to an insufficient sample size, violence incidence rate, and statistically significant associations. Thus, it has been claimed that more research is needed to identify statistically significant predictors for stalking and violence (James & Farnham, 2003).
Currently, a prior victim-stalker relationship is considered to be the best predictor of the duration of stalking (McEwan et al., 2007, 2009) also emerging as a significant predictor for the duration of stalking in the present study. Moreover, the present study adds to prior research by offering some promising results which show that the prediction of the stalking duration could be considerably improved by stalking behavior dimensions and victim subgroups based on these stalking dimensions. Together these predictors accounted for a considerable amount of the variance regarding the duration of stalking. The findings of the present study suggest that it is possible to distinguish victim subgroups that are homogeneous within a group regarding exposure to stalking and heterogeneous across subgroups. Both the theoretical and clinical implications concerning latent classes need to be further studied and their use in predictive models should be tested to achieve greater broader applicability for clinicians and law enforcement. The present findings however indicate that we should go beyond stalking dimensions in order to capture the essence of stalking behavior. The utility and importance of distinguishing subgroups within various samples have been stressed in several recent studies. There is a growing use of person-centered analysis like latent profile analysis (LPA) and latent class analysis (LCA) by applied social sciences and recently also in social and forensic sciences (Nurius & Macy, 2008; Schwalbe, Macy, Day & Fraser, 2008;
Vaughn, DeLisi, Beaver & Howard, 2008). These studies suggest that person-orientated methods hold both clinical and forensic utility, for example in the development of tailored intervention programs for victims and classifying offenders. Thus, it is our hope that these findings would encourage further application of person-centered analysis within forensic sciences.
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Considering the nature and prevalence of stalking, the need of urgent solutions is obvious.
Because of the very same reasons, i.e. the nature of stalking (e.g. persistence, association to close relationships and violence), the solutions can seldom be fast or obvious. Thus, an ability to cope with prolonged stress might emerge as a key factor in coping with stalking. Prior studies on coping with stalking have merely been focusing on listing behavioral coping actions used by victims in response to stalking. The present study aimed to examine coping with stalking also in parallel with a broader, theoretical framework. Several significant associations were found between some coping strategies and certain key variables of stalking (victim-stalker relationship, stalker violence, and number of stalking episodes). Especially the associations between stalking variables and problem-solving and avoidance coping strategies are interesting because of their connections to well-being. However, the adaptive and maladaptive qualities of problem-solving and avoidance strategies should be further studied in the context of stalking, as the findings regarding the associations between these strategies and well-being have been somewhat contradictory. Furthermore, the victims’ evaluation on the effectiveness of the coping strategies on stalking-related stress was not included in the measure used in the present study. Future studies may want to implement a measure for coping effectiveness, as it has been suggested that it is the perceived effectiveness, or how the individual thought he/she handled the problem, which may moderate the association between coping and health (Aldwin & Revenson, 1987). Nonetheless, one of the advantages regarding the coping theory framework is that it has already shown a utility for intervention development (mostly cognitive-behavioral techniques) and yet the exploration of its potential benefits for coping interventions has barely begun (de Ridder & Schreurs, 2001; Folkman &
Moskowitz, 2004). Currently, there is an emerging interest in identifying coping processes associated with finding meaning or growth in response to victimization, traumatic events and, chronic stress (Aldwin & Levenson, 2004; de Ridder, Greenen, Kuijer & van Middendorp, 2008; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004; Park & Folkman, 1997; Janoff-Bulman, 1992;
Updegraff, Silver & Holman, 2008). Thus, it has been recently noted that the emphasis on the reasons why people fail to achieve a healthy adjustment has shifted to identify factors that promote adjustment (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004; de Ridder et al., 2008).
Apart from diagnosing and treating diseases and medical conditions, it is vital that the health care professionals are responsive to students’ problems and uncertainties without understating their concerns or reinforcing the symptom-orientated approach. The two student health surveys administered in Finland (2000 and 2004) showed that health-related problems
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among students are associated with a number of issues as to the phase of life, studies, life style and interpersonal relationships. It was stated that these issues should be taken into account in the context of student health care, so that the message behind the symptom would not go undiscovered (Kunttu, 2004). Thus, the present study adds to those surveys by suggesting that also issues of stalking and violence should be taken into account in a student health care context along with its larger multidisciplinary context.
Recognition, treatment and prevention of violence victimization are demanding tasks for health care. Within the health care practice context, routine screening is an often suggested response against violence, and one which has also recently been suggested against stalking.
However, the issue of screening has proven contradictory and complex and there is an ongoing debate concerning the evidence for the effectiveness of screening (Gielen et al., 2000; Pikarinen et al., 2007; Ramsay et al., 2002). Therefore, screening may not be introduced as a standard health care procedure against the negative health impact of violence.
Before screening can be implemented, there is a need for basic training regarding meeting a victim of violence in a health care setting. Education has been suggested as a way of lowering the barriers for screening for both health care professionals and victims, as confronting these issues can be equally difficult for both parties (Erickson et al., 2001; Kilpatrick et al., 1997;
Waalen et al., 2000). At the same time, health care professionals face difficult medical problems on a daily basis; therefore it can be questioned whether validating a victim’s violent
Waalen et al., 2000). At the same time, health care professionals face difficult medical problems on a daily basis; therefore it can be questioned whether validating a victim’s violent