Sexual corruption is a harmful form of power abuse that undermines both individuals’ rights and institutions, yet it remains poorly understood. This paper focuses on sexual corruption in higher education by addressing two questions: how can its prevalence be reliably measured, and which gender- and power-related norms shape its perception, normalisation, and reporting? First, the study uses a list experiment to estimate the prevalence of sexual corruption. The results are compared with those from two standard instruments for sensitive questions, namely direct questions about personal and second-hand experiences. Second, the study analyses which social norms shape an individual’s disclosure and sanctioning of sexual corruption by applying state-of-the-art methods, including vignettes. My theory states that gender and power-related social norms, personal attitudes towards sexual corruption, and the context, such as dependencies and power-relations, shape willingness to report sexual corruption. The study is based on an original survey conducted among current students at an Indonesian university (n=380) to show the effectiveness of different measurement approaches. Thereby, this paper directly contributes not only to the analysis of sexual corruption, and corruption and gender-based violence more widely, but also to the measurement of sensitive questions in general.
