Mittuniversitetet

The majority of the victims of a sexual crime in Sweden have an age between 16 to 24 years. Since sexual crimes can have detrimental consequences, areas such as risk factors have been studied extensively. However, less research have addressed the topic of peoples' knowledge about what constitutes sexual crimes and which attitudes they have toward them, especially among adolescents in a Swedish context. Therefore, this study aimed to fill this gap in the literature by assessing Swedish adolescents' knowledge about and attitudes toward sexual crimes. Using a quantitative cross-sectional research design, a questionnaire was created asking participants to identify sexual crimes using short scenarios in order to assess their knowledge about these and to rate their agreement to statements in order to test their attitudes toward sexual crimes. The results showed quite good knowledge about and less supportive attitudes toward sexual crimes among the Swedish adolescents with differences between the studied sociodemographic groups. Factors such as family, media or commercial and the internet were found to affect their level of knowledge and attitudes. These findings are both contradictory to and consistent with previous research performed in the area. The results are explained using the interaction theory and the social learning theory. In conclusion, the studied Swedish adolescents were found to have quite good knowledge about and less supportive attitudes toward sexual crimes with differences among the sociodemographic groups and different factors stated to affect the level of knowledge and the attitudes, indicating where interventions are needed. Future research should expand on these findings and the methodology while introducing new variables that could be of importance for adolescents' knowledge about and attitudes toward sexual crimes.