“You Do It without Their Knowledge.” Assessing Knowledge and Perception of Stealthing among College Students

In recent years, the act of nonconsensual condom removal, termed stealthing, has become commonly discussed on social and print media; yet, little to no evidence exists on the current knowledge and perception of stealthing among young adults. As such, we assessed what college students know and feel regarding stealthing. We employed an exploratory mixed-method analysis where focus groups were followed by a quantitative survey. A qualitative assessment was conducted using grounded theory analyses and questions for a quantitative survey were developed based on emergent themes from focus groups. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and bivariate analyses with alpha less than 0.05 to denote significance. Though limited knowledge exists, participants felt that stealthing was a violation of their privacy, trust, sexual consent, and their ability to make a health decision, and should be considered an assault. Participants noted stealthing may have become acceptable due to its popularity in social media and young adult culture, especially porn. We also found sex differences in the perception of stealthing being considered a sexual assault with lower rates among males as compared to females. Our results demonstrate that there is a need for health educators to assess the prevalence of such a behavior among college students and policy makers to assess the legal implications of nonconsensual condom removal.