ABSTRACT Title of Thesis: BEYOND THE MAINSTREAM: A THEORY TEST OF SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT AND SEXUAL ASSAULT

Title of Thesis: BEYOND THE MAINSTREAM: A THEORY TEST OF SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT AND SEXUAL ASSAULT Maja Milana Vlajnic, Master of Arts, 2012 Thesis Directed By: Professor Terence Thornberry Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice While many mainstream criminological theories purportedly explain all types of crime, next to nothing in the literature tests for rape and sexual assault – an exceptional oversight, considering that an alternate theoretical explanation (feminist theory) exists for this class of crime. This thesis hopes to begin to rectify this gap in the literature by testing an aspect of control theory, the school bond. Using the National Youth Survey, logistic regression is applied to test the effects of school engagement (academic and athletic) on rapes attempted or completed by male adolescents. Support for neither the control theory hypothesis nor the feminist theory hypothesis is found, as neither engagement variable reaches significant results. However, this thesis still hopes to emphasize the necessity of literature specifically testing rape and sexual assault, and offers directions for future research to expand on this. BEYOND THE MAINSTREAM: A THEORY TEST OF SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT AND SEXUAL ASSAULT by Maja Milana Vlajnic Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2012 Advisory Committee: Professor Terence Thornberry, Chair Professor Laura Dugan Professor Denise Gottfredson ©Copyright by Maja Milana Vlajnic 2012