School of Humanities, University of Toyama, 3190 Gofuku, Toyama-shi, Toyama, 930-8555, Japan.
BMC Psychol. 2024 Sep 28;12(1):515. doi: 10.1186/s40359-024-02035-7.
Stalking can escalate into violent acts such as threatening and inflicting physical harm, posing a serious threat to personal safety. To prevent exacerbating stalking victimization, victims must seek help and report incidents to the police or relevant authorities. However, victims, in general, underreport these incidents to public institutions. Moreover, there is insufficient understanding of why victims of stalking, especially men, refrain from seeking help. Therefore, this study used text mining to explore the reasons victims of stalking in Japan do not seek help while considering the severity of victimization and analyzing data separately for men and women.
Among 908 Japanese individuals who reported experiencing repeated stalking behavior from a former intimate partner in the past five years, 253 men and 321 women who did not consult public authorities were included in this study. Participants provided their experiences of being stalked by former romantic partners and were classified into stalking-only, threatened, and physical aggression victim groups based on their self-reported experiences in an online survey. Reasons for not seeking help were collected through open-ended questions and analyzed using text mining.
A co-occurrence network analysis revealed that among men in the threatened victim group, the reason for not seeking help was the belief that their complaints would not be taken seriously. The physical aggression victim group did not seek help due to the perception that a female perpetrator does not pose a danger. Among women in the physical aggression victim group, concerns about provoking the perpetrator or worsening the situation by seeking help, as well as feelings of embarrassment, were reasons for not seeking assistance.
The identification of gender stereotype-related reasons among male victims was a valuable insight that could only be obtained through comparison with female victims. However, the study was limited to addressing the individual characteristics of the cases, thus providing only hypothetical insights into general trends. In future research, it will be necessary to generate hypotheses from the findings of this study and accumulate hypothesis-testing research to develop effective strategies for promoting help-seeking behavior among stalking victims.
跟踪行为可能会升级为威胁和身体伤害等暴力行为，对人身安全构成严重威胁。为了防止跟踪受害情况恶化，受害者必须寻求帮助并向警方或相关当局报告事件。然而，一般来说，受害者向公共机构报告这些事件的情况较少。此外，人们对为什么跟踪受害者，尤其是男性，避免寻求帮助的原因了解不足。因此，本研究使用文本挖掘技术，从考虑受害严重程度的角度，分别对男性和女性跟踪受害者进行分析，以探讨日本跟踪受害者不寻求帮助的原因。
在过去五年中有 908 名日本个人报告曾遭受过前亲密伴侣的反复跟踪行为，其中 253 名男性和 321 名女性没有向公共机构咨询，他们在一项在线调查中根据自己的经历报告了被前浪漫伴侣跟踪的经历，并被分为仅跟踪、受到威胁和遭受身体攻击的受害者群体。通过开放式问题收集不寻求帮助的原因，并使用文本挖掘进行分析。
共现网络分析显示，在受到威胁的男性受害者群体中，不寻求帮助的原因是他们认为自己的投诉不会被认真对待。遭受身体攻击的男性受害者群体不寻求帮助是因为他们认为女性施害者不会构成危险。在遭受身体攻击的女性受害者群体中，不寻求帮助的原因包括担心激怒施害者或使情况恶化，以及感到尴尬。
在与女性受害者进行比较后，确定了与男性受害者性别刻板印象相关的原因，这是一个有价值的见解。然而，该研究仅限于解决个别案例的特征，因此只能提供对一般趋势的假设性见解。在未来的研究中，有必要从本研究的发现中生成假设，并积累假设检验研究，以制定促进跟踪受害者寻求帮助的有效策略。
