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Abstract
While sexual violence is manifested through actions, how individuals and societies define and respond to sexual violence is influenced by the social construction of sexual consent. This dissertation used a mixed methods approach in which qualitative methods contributed to the creation of a quantitative instrument to measure perceptions of sexual consent amongst young Kenyans. This dissertation is comprised of three papers with distinct foci. The first paper describes the analysis of representations of sexual consent in a large sample of narratives contributed by young Kenyans, Nigerians and Swazis in 2005, 2008 and 2014. These narratives represent sexual consent as a feeling of wanting or being willing to have sex, or an intention to have sex, that is communicated via character actions, conversations or circumstances. Results were translated into a conceptual framework that guided creation of a vignette survey to measure beliefs about indicators of sexual consent, beliefs and norms around blame and power in sexual situations, and perceived approval from others. The second paper in this dissertation describes the process of translating findings from the narrative analysis into vignettes and survey items that, taken together, form the vignette survey. Twenty-two cognitive interviews were carried out to assess young Kenyans’ comprehension and response decision-making with the vignette survey. Results from the cognitive interviews informed the refinement of the vignettes and survey items. This approach reflects the use of qualitative methods to create a quantitative instrument, which was further refined using a qualitative method. The third paper explores opportunities afforded via cognitive interviews of vignette surveys and draws attention to the implications of the narrative properties of vignettes in surveys that can be examined in cognitive interviewing. This methodological paper examines cognitive interviewing strategies to understand participants’ comprehension and response decision-making in relation to vignette and survey items and provides suggestions for future cognitive interviewers on how to cognitively interview with vignette surveys. Taken together, this mixed methods dissertation describes the use of multiple qualitative methods to create one quantitative instrument and reveals the range of detail provided by qualitative methods that get distilled in the quantitative instrument to measure sexual consent.