Advice to crime victims:: Effects of crime, victim, and advisor factors

There is consistent evidence from a variety of sources that crime victims' reporting decisions are influenced by others. The present studies extended this prior work by surveying two statewide stratified random samples (n_s = 817 and 832). In Study 1, of 148 respondents who said a family member had been a victim of sexual assault, domestic assault, or robbery, only 65% said that they had advised the victims to report the crime, and women were significantly more likely to advise reporting domestic assault than were men. In both Study 1 and Study 2, respondents were asked about the appropriateness of reporting specific crimes to the police. Based on both within-and between-respondent questions, it appears that reporting advice is contingent on several factors: The seriousness of the offense, the gender of the victim, the victim-offender relationship, and the gender of the respondent.