Cyber victimization of adult women: A systematic review

Abstract: Internet technology has paved new diversion in crime and victimization. There is voluminous data related to cyber victimization of adolescents and college students, however there is dearth of research related to cyber victimization of adult women. The purpose of this systematic review was to investigate the prevalence of cyber victimization of adult women other than by intimate partner or ex-partner and to find out their risk factors as well as consequences. Articles were searched between January, 2010 to April, 2020 from ProQuest, PsycInfo, CINAHL, Web of Science, JSTOR, ASSIA and PubMed databases. A total of 2988 studies were extracted, after initial screening, 275 were left for full text review. A total of 14 studies were finally reviewed and qualitatively assessed according to Standard quality assessment criteria for evaluating primary research papers (Kmet et al., 2004). Three were discarded for not meeting the desired quality rating of > .75. Review comprised of multiethnic and multinational sample of 6019 participants, aged between 17 to 68yrs. Results revealed that women are cyber victimized more as compared to males especially sexual victimization is more prevalent among women than men. The important risk factors identified are age, sexual orientation, lack of social support, low self-esteem, control imbalance, opportunity and risky behaviors. Due to cyber victimization emotional distress, pathological ruminations and depression are reported as consequence.