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The Societal Response Index: Measuring Public Response to Sexual Misconduct Disclosure

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  • Núria Rodríguez-Planas

Abstract

How societies respond after women disclose sexual misconduct shapes survivors’ well-being, reporting behavior, institutional accountability, and social norms. Yet, no validated measure of society’s collective public response following disclosure exists. This paper introduces the Societal Response Index (SRI), a pre-registered, multidimensional framework with 5 complementary dimensions — volume persistence (VP), secondary victimization, identity exposure, supportive/contested response, and temporal reactivation — and develops and validates its first dimension, VP. Using census-level tweet counts from the X fullarchive API, I construct weekly attention series for fourteen sexual misconduct cases spanning Spain, the United States, and France (2011–2026). VP’s three highest-attention weeks fall within two weeks of a pre-registered milestone for all fourteen cases; same-day detection reaches 75% and within-14-day detection reaches 91%. VP correlates positively and significantly with Google Trends for all cases. The measurement architecture, keyword dictionaries, and event timelines will be released as a public good upon publication. As an illustration of substantive reach, official reporting of sexual offenses tends to rise following case milestones.

Suggested Citation

  • Núria Rodríguez-Planas, 2026. "The Societal Response Index: Measuring Public Response to Sexual Misconduct Disclosure," CESifo Working Paper Series 12801, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12801
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    JEL classification:

    • C43 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Index Numbers and Aggregation
    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • K14 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law - - - Criminal Law

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