Sexual Violence Screening: Impact on Healthcare Usage & Savings

This report investigates the impact of sexual violence screening on healthcare usage, healthcare savings, and the quality of life of victims. The research employs a correlation design, utilizing the Pearson Correlation Coefficient Test to analyze the relationship between sexual violence screening and the three outcome variables. The study aims to determine whether screening influences healthcare usage, savings, and the overall well-being of victims. The study design includes an online survey administered to sexual assault victims at a university, with sampling conducted using Cochran's Sample Size Formula. The report presents the research question, hypotheses, study design, variable descriptions, and data collection methods, and it concludes that the correlation research design is appropriate for addressing the research question, and the Cochran’s Sample Size Formula will be best fit in determining the sample size for the research.

IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE
SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE
USAGE, HEALTH CARE SAVINGS
AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’
LIVES THEREAFTER

IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
RESEARCH QUESTION.........................................................................................................................4
RESEARCH HYPOTHESES...................................................................................................................5
STUDY DESIGN.......................................................................................................................................6
VARIABLE DESCRIPTION...................................................................................................................7
DATA COLLECTION AND SAMPLING..............................................................................................8
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES........................................................................................................................................10
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
INTRODUCTION
The screening for sexual violence is especially important in institutions of higher learning
where stigmatization plays a huge factor in preventing victims from reporting instances of sexual
assault and seeking specialized treatment (Logan, Walker, & Cole, 2015). The victims often
conceal the real cause (in this case, being assaulted sexually) of their injuries. Through screening
for sexual violence, the victims of sexual assault can be identified and subsequently encouraged
to open up and seek specialized screening (Henry & Powell, 2018).
Assessing the effectiveness and accompanying impacts of screening for sexual violence
is important in determining what policies should be adopted when it comes to patient screening.
It is also important in the development of approaches in medical practice regarding patient
screening. This assessment is also vital in theory and research since it will provide more
information on the subject, hence forming the basis for development of theories and further
research.
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
RESEARCH QUESTION
The research question for this research is: What impact does sexual violence screening
have on the health care usage, health care savings and the excellence of victims’ lives thereafter?
The screening for sexual violence might encourage a patient to seek further medical care
especially if the screening affirms existence of sexual assault. The patient will be encouraged to
open up about the sexual violence that they are exposed to. The care giver can then recommend
the patient to specialists for both physical and psychological treatment. Whereas this is the ideal
situation, the research will aim at establishing whether screening for sexual violence encourages
sexual assault victims to seek more health care services.
The same case as for the health care usage applies for the health care savings. Ideally,
seeking of further health care services lead to increase in health care spending and consequently
a decrease in the health care savings. This research will evaluate the impact of the screening for
sexual violence on health care savings.
Also ideally, we would expect that the screening for sexual violence would help the
sexual assault victim to open up about the assault and hence their lives would be better
thereafter. We cannot guarantee that if the screening for sexual violence affirms existence or
history of assault, then the victim will seek the specialized treatment. We also cannot guarantee
that if the victim seeks specialized treatment they will actually have a better life thereafter.
Hence, we have to examine whether the screening for sexual violence affects the quality of the
lives of the victims thereafter.
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
RESEARCH HYPOTHESES
This research will test three hypotheses for the research question. The first hypothesis
(Hypothesis One) will check for the relationship between the sexual violence screening and
health care usage:
H0: The sexual violence screening and health care usage are related to each other.
H1: The sexual violence screening and health care usage are independent of each other.
The second hypothesis (Hypothesis Two) will check for the relationship between the
sexual violence screening and health care savings:
H0: The sexual violence screening and health care savings are related to each other.
H1: The sexual violence screening and health care savings are independent of each other.
The third hypothesis (Hypothesis Three) will check for the relationship between the
sexual violence screening and quality of life of victims’ lives thereafter:
H0: The sexual violence screening and quality of life thereafter are related to each other.
H1: The sexual violence screening and quality of life thereafter are independent of each
other.
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
STUDY DESIGN
This research will apply a correlation research design. The correlation design is a
quantitative research method which is applied when there is interest in determining what form of
relationship exists between two or more factors of interest in a research (Everitt & Skrondal,
2010; Howitt & Cramer, 2010). This research design is appropriate for this research since the
research is interested in examining the relationship between the sexual violence screening and
the other factors in this research (health care usage, health care savings and quality of life).
The Pearson Correlation Coefficient Test will be the correlation test that will be applied
for this research. The value the Pearson Correlation Coefficient ranges between -1 and 1 (O'Neil
& Schutt, 2013). Values close to 0 indicate weak correlation, positive values indicate positive
correlation, negative values indicate negative correlation and values close to the extremes
indicate strong correlation (Shaffer, 2011).
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
VARIABLE DESCRIPTION
Table 1: Variable Description Table
Variable
Name
Variable Description Variable Type Measurement
Scale
Sexual
Violence
Screening
Categorical Variable which
represents information on
whether a sexual assault victim
underwent screening. Yes (1) or
No (0).
Independent Variable Nominal
Health Care
Usage
Categorical Variable on whether a
sexual assault victim sort health
care services regardless of
screening. Yes (1) or No (0).
Dependent Variable Nominal
Health Care
Savings
Numerical Variable representing
amount of money spent on health
care by the victim of sexual
assault.
Dependent Variable Ratio
Quality of
Life
Categorical Variable representing
the description of the life after
assault by the victim on a Likert
scale.
Dependent Variable Ordinal
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
DATA COLLECTION AND SAMPLING
The population of study for this research will be the victims of sexual assault at the
university. This population of study is appropriate since this research is interested in
investigating sexual assault in institutions of higher learning. The data will be collected from
volunteer participants through an online survey, which will be a cross-sectional survey.
This research will use the Cochran’s Sample Size Formula for sampling. The Cochran’s
Sample Size Formula gives consideration to the ratio of population of study to the overall
population which makes it advantageous (Ulf-Dietrich & Uwe, 2014). This formula applies the
equation below (Cochran, 1977):
n= Z2 pq
e2
Z is value observed from probability tables, p is the estimated percentage of sexual
assault victims at the university, q = p – 1 while e represents margin of error.
Information on the estimated percentage of sexual assault at the university can be
collected from the relevant agencies at the university such as security and medical services.
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
CONCLUSION
We can conclude that the correlation research design presents the best research design for
addressing the research question in this research. This is since this research design provides for
the evaluation of the nature of relationship between factors.
We also conclude that the Cochran’s Sample Size Formula will be best fit in determining
the sample size for the research. This formula will produce a sample size that can be considered
representative of the entire university population. This would allow the findings from this
research to be acceptable and reliable.
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IMPACT OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE SCREENING ON HEALTH CARE USAGE, HEALTH
CARE SAVINGS AND EXCELLENCE OF VICTIMS’ LIVES THEREAFTER
REFERENCES
Cochran, W. G. (1977). Sampling Techniques (3rd ed.). New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Everitt, B. S., & Skrondal, A. (2010). Cambridge Dictionary of Statistics (4th ed.). London:
Cambridge University Press.
Henry, N., & Powell, A. (2018). Technology-Facilitated Sexual Violence: A Literature Review
of Emperical Research. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 195-208.
Howitt, D., & Cramer, D. (2010). Introduction to Descriptive Statistics in Psycology, 5th
Edition. New York: Prentice Hall.
Logan, T. K., Walker, R., & Cole, J. (2015). Silenced Suffering: The Need for a Better
Understanding of Patner Sexual Violence. Trauma, Violence & Abuse, 16(2), 111-135.
O'Neil, C., & Schutt, R. (2013). Doing Data Science (3rd ed.). London: O'Reily.
Shaffer, C. A. (2011). Data Structures and Algorithms Analysis. Mineola: Dover.
Ulf-Dietrich, R., & Uwe, M. (2014). Mining "Big Data" Using Big Data Services. International
Journal of Internet Science, 1(1), 1-8.
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