Our findings are strengthened by the uniform measurement across countries. This is particularly relevant for sexual violence as question wording and operationalization is known to make an impact on estimates of sexual violence (Fisher, 2009). Varying prevalence rates across countries are probably due to a combination of true differences, cultural willingness to disclose, and cultural differences in labeling an experience as ‘rape’ or ‘unwanted/inappropriate sexual contact’ due to differences in perceptions of autonomy over one’s body or right to deny sexual advances. Our finding that sexual violence is reported most often in Australia, New Zealand and the USA, which is consistent with two recent publications (Stoltenborgh et al. 2011; Abrahams et al. 2014), may very well be due to this latter explanation.
