Intention for internal whistleblowing to report sexual violence in higher education institutions: a Nigerian national study

Background Sexual violence is prevalent in higher education institutions in Nigeria and stakeholders have encouraged staff and students to blow the whistle whenever they fall victim to or are aware of any sexual violence case. However, there is lack of data about whether the staff and students of these institutions have the intention to blow the whistle internally (within the institution) or not. There is also a lack of data on the existing reporting mechanisms or preferred whistleblowing mechanisms in these institutions. These have hindered the analysis of stakeholders’ opinions on this topic. Methods This data note presents a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative data set collected from staff and students of three categories of government owned higher education institutions (Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education) in Nigeria. Data collection was between February and December, 2021, during which quantitative data were collected from 21,937 students and 3,108 staff. Qualitatively, 138 students and 111 staff participated in a total of 35 focus group discussion sessions. The study provides unique information on respondents’ attitude, self-efficacy, and subjective norm to sexual violence whistleblowing. It also provides information on self-reported sexual violence experiences, whistleblowing intention, reporting systems in higher institutions and the preferred sexual violence whistleblowing mechanisms. Conclusions In this data note, we provide a detailed account of the variables in the dataset and then highlight the potential of this study to contribute to improved sexual violence reporting in higher education institutions, thereby reducing the occurrence of the social menace.


Introduction
Sexual violence has been a global issue for many years, most especially in the 21 st century among the young population.Students of higher education have been reported to fall victim to and have also been documented to be perpetrators of this social menace.In Nigeria, there are reports of increased prevalence of sexual violence among higher education students (Egbegi et al., 2019;Yesufu & Adimula, 2018, April, 23;Onoyase, 2019;British Broadcasting Corporation -BBC, 2019).Due to the frequency of sexual violence in educational institutions in Nigeria, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) (an agency established to prosecute perpetrators of corrupt practices in Nigeria) instructed students to report cases of sexual harassment to the commission (ICPC, 2019) and that such cases will be handled under anti-corruption laws.Anecdotal evidences have shown that, the reporting systems for sexual violating acts have not been very effective in many of these institutions as many cases still go unreported, thereby perpetuating the menace.As far back as 2004, Lee and others have documented that whistleblowing can be used to report sexual harassment just like any other organizational wrongdoings (Lee et al., 2004).There has been a call for the use of internal whistleblowing for reporting sexual violence in higher education institutions in Nigeria by many stakeholders.Whistleblowing is an act of disclosing information that are considered to be of public interest and are also unethical (Dungan, 2015).The act of whistleblowing is generally backed by law which also gives protection to the whistleblower (Latan, 2023).This is quite different from reporting in which issues are brought to the attention of authorities and such issues may not have serious public concern or legal backing (King III, 2000).Most times in Nigerian educational institutions, students and staff are regularly encouraged to report acts of sexual violence but, there is a shift now from reporting to whistleblowing because, it's been observed that cases of sexual violence is still rampant in educational institutions.Less than two years ago, the Shehu Musa Yar'Adua Foundation, in partnership with the Gender and Development Policy Centre, University of Nigeria Nsukka, launched the 'Gender Justice Whistleblowing Portal' for reporting sexual violence at the university (Odu, 2021;Nov. 19).
As a result of the level of seriousness attached to whistleblowing, we are of the opinion that an individual must have intention to blow the whistle for sexual violence before carrying out the task.An enabling environment or recognized laid down mechanism must be put in place to ensure effective whistleblowing.As of today, we are not aware of any dataset that provides information on all of these variables which may subsequently be analysed and used for policy formulation for sexual violence prevention in higher educational institutions in Nigeria.Therefore, this data note provides information on the variables included in the study dataset which are: respondents' attitude, self-efficacy, subjective norm; selfreported sexual violence experiences; whistleblowing intention, reporting systems in higher institutions and the preferred sexual violence whistleblowing mechanisms.In this data note, we provide detailed account of the variables in the dataset and then highlight the potential of this study to contribute to improved sexual violence reporting in higher education institutions thereby reducing the occurrence of the menace.

Specific objectives of the study
The six specific objectives of the study were to 1. describe the sexual violence experiences of students in tertiary educational institutions; 2. determine the influence of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control on intentions of students and staff to internally blow the whistle for reporting sexual violence cases; 3. identify socio-demographic factors (academic level, course of study, gender, age, sexual violence experiences, tribe and religion) that predict students' intention to internally blow the whistle for reporting sexual violence cases; REVISED Amendments from Version 2   In this revision, the followings were made: -The statement indicating the adaptation of the SES-SFV scale in the study has been reworded -The difference between whistleblowing and reporting has been added to the introduction section -Appropriate references have also been place in the reference list Any further responses from the reviewers can be found at the end of the article 4. identify socio-demographic factors (gender, age, tribe, religion, designation and length of service) that predict staff intention to internally blow the whistle for reporting sexual violence cases; 5. explore possible internal whistleblowing strategies for reporting sexual violence cases; and 6. explore strategies for protecting sexual violence whistleblowers.

Theoretical framework
This study was hinged on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB).The theory describes that behavioural intention of an individual to engage in a particular behaviour is a product of three determinants: the individual's attitude (opinions of oneself towards the behaviour); the subjective norms (opinions of others towards the behaviour); and perceived behavioural control (self-efficacy towards the behaviour) (Ajzen, 2012).According to Arafat and Ibrahim's (2018), the greater the subjective norm, the favorable behavior (attitude), and perceived control, the stronger the person's intention to perform the behavior in question.Whistleblowing has been referred to as a planned behaviour, and the Theory of Planned Behaviour has been used by several authors, such as Tarjo et al. (2019), Zakaria et al. (2016), Owusu et al. (2020), and Wahyuni et al. (2021), to support whistleblowing intention.In the Nigerian context, for an individual to have intention for whistle blowing for reporting sexual violence act, he/she must have a positive attitude towards whistleblowing as an effective mechanism.Such individual must also consider that, his/her action will be acceptable by significant others and that he/she has the capacity and the wherewithal to blow the whistle.This is so because, reporting perpetrators of sexual violence in Nigeria is considered an unsafe action for the reporter or the survivor (Aborisade, 2014).Aside from the three determinants of TPB, background variables such as demographic factors have been identified to indirectly influence behavioural intention through the three determinants and consequently the behaviour (Menozzi et al., 2015).It is expected in this study that the socio-demographic factors of the students and staff such as academic level, course of study, gender, age, sexual violence experiences, tribe, religion, designation and length of service will influence their intention to internally blow the whistle for sexual violence (Figure 1).

Methods
A concurrent mixed method design using quantitative and qualitative data collection methods was adopted for the study.
The study was carried out in 18 institutions comprising Federal Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Universities in all the six geo-political zones of Nigeria.The target population of the students in the selected schools was 246,216 students while that of staff was 31,982 (National University Commission -NUC, 2017;Federal Ministry of Education, 2019;National Bureau of Statistics, 2019).The sample size calculation was in two modes; qualitative and quantitative methods.

Eligibility criteria
Institutions where the study was conducted were those owned and controlled by the Federal Government of Nigeria and must either be a polytechnic, college of education or university.The students were those undergoing full-time traditional face-to-face programmes and were undergraduates.Staff participants were those who work full-time mode in the selected institutions.Contract or part-time staff were excluded from the study.

Quantitative strand
Using Cochran's survey sample size formula: n = z 2 pq/e 2 where n = sample size; z = standard normal deviate set at 1.95 which corresponds to 95% confidence level; p = 0.5 (set at 50% for unknown prevalence of whistleblowing intention); q = 1-p = 0.5; e = permitted error of margin set at 2.5% (in order to get a large representative sample), a sample size of 1,521 students was obtained per institution.Adding non-response rate of 10%, a final sample size of 1,673 was obtained per institution giving a total of 30,114 students' respondents for the 18 institutions.Using the same Cochran's formula: n = z 2 pq/e 2 and same parameters for the staff except for the permitted error of margin set at 5%, a sample size of 418 was obtained per institution after adding 10% non-response rate.Therefore, a total of 7,524 staff (academic & non-academic) was selected and distributed proportionately in all the 18 institutions and into equal proportion of male and female staff.

Qualitative strand
The number of participants in non-commercial focus groups is recommended to be between six and 10 in order to be able to control the group (Kabir, 2016).Therefore, we proposed to have eight members (four males and four females) of the Student Union Government in each of the institutions to participate in the study making a total of 144 students for the 18 institutions.Also, two representatives (a male and a female) from each of the Staff Unions in each institution were selected to participate in the FGD.The Unions represented are listed according to the type of school: Therefore, for Universities, there were eight executive officers (four males, four females) from each institution giving a total of 48 participants for the six Universities.For Colleges of Education and Polytechnics, there were six officers (three males and three females) from each institution giving a total of 72 participants for the 12 institutions.Overall, a total of 120 staff formed the sample size for the staff FGD participants.

Sampling
Multistage stratified sampling technique was adopted in this study.Nigeria is already stratified into six geo-political zones and in each zone, government-owned higher institutions were stratified by University, Polytechnic and College of Education.In each of the stratum, one institution was selected using simple random sampling technique (balloting) thereby giving a total of three schools from each zone (Figure 2 -produced by the authors).A random selection of departments from each of the schools were done followed by the students' and staff stratification into male and female gender and also stratification into academic and non-academic staff.A random selection was finally used to select the respondents by proportion as shown in Table 1.For the qualitative strand, the Presidents of each of the unions were contacted to nominate members of their cabinet to participate in the FGD putting into consideration equal gender in the nomination.However, it was observed that there were more males in many of the cabinets than females hence, more male officers participated in the FGD than females.This has been attributed to the general assumption that more males take on leadership roles than females.

Instruments
Two instruments were used for data collection: Sexual Violence Whistleblowing Intentions Questionnaire (SeVWIQ) and a Focus Group Discussion Guide.
1.The SeVWIQ was in two forms.The first was administered to students and it elicited information on their attitude to whistleblowing, subjective norm, self-efficacy, whistleblowing intentions, sexual violence experiences and demographics.The second was for the staff and it elicited information on their attitude to   2) and Very Likely (3).The questions on the attitude, subjective norm and self-efficacy were adapted from the work of Zakaria et al. (2016).Three questions were constructed to represent acts of rape, attempted rape and sexual harassment which were used to assess the sexual violence experiences of the students.The students were asked to state the number of times (0, 1, 2, 3+) they experienced the acts in the past 12 months.The essence of this sexual violence experience section of the questionnaire was to confirm in our study that sexual violence still occurs among higher education students.We did not go to the field to conduct full sexual violence prevalence study since there are many studies that have done this in Nigeria.The whistleblowing intention component of the questionnaire were formulated using three vignettes which were adapted from the work of Ahmad (2011).The vignettes represented cases of rape, attempted rape and sexual harassment and were rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Information on the vignettes depicted the participants as third-party whistleblowers and not as survivors.It is assumed that survivors will report when they are victimised, but a third-party report is not the usual practice in higher education institutions (HEIs).Whistleblowing action can be taken by a third-party and not necessarily the survivor, and we are of the opinion that the HEIs should be considering third-party whistleblowing and also take action when there is evidence.
2. The Focus Group Discussion Guide (FGDG) which was developed from the review of literature, explored information on sexual violence cases on the school campuses, institutional laid down strategies for reporting sexual violence, factors that may predict the staff and students' intention to blow the whistle, strategies for reporting and protecting whistleblowers, and the effectiveness of internal whistleblowing strategies.

Pilot study/pre-test of instruments
The pilot study was carried out in a University of Technology in South West Nigeria.Using the recommendation of Connelly, ( 2008) that 10% of main sample size can be used for pilot study, therefore, 167 students (10% of 1,673) and 42 staff (10% of 418) were selected to participate in the pilot study.Eight members of the Student Union Government and eight members of the leadership of the four Staff Unions of the school participated in the two separate FGD sessions (one for the students and the other for staff).During the pilot study, the officers of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in the school did not participate in the FGD despite various efforts to convince them to participate.We therefore recruited academic staff members who were not necessarily officers of the union to participate in the study.During the main study, we planned to use this method in any of the schools peradventure we ran into similar problems.Fortunately, we never experienced such problem except in a particular school where the entire officers of the unions, both academic and non-academic, refused to participate hence, we did not conduct FGD in such school.During the pilot study, the questionnaire was subjected to face and content validity and internal consistency, while trustworthiness of the FGD data was also ensured.Part of the findings from the pilot study has been published in Ogunfowokan et al. (2023).Also, the questionnaire's internal consistency was further assessed during the main study to further evaluate its reliability.The Cronbach alpha results for both the pilot and the main studies are stated in Table 2. Field staff A field supervisor was identified in each of the schools except the three Northern regions where only one field supervisor was identified and he worked with the investigator from the North to collect the data.The supervisors were responsible for the logistics of sampling and the data collection process.They were trained twice using the virtual mode between December 2020 and January, 2021.The principal investigator was the chief trainer supported by other investigators.The field supervisors then appointed field workers in their respective schools and were trained in the administration of the questionnaires.Also, the two mentees who were postgraduate students as required in the funding call served as the research assistants for the study.The mentees have been part of the writing process for the grant proposal and they were further trained alongside the supervisors.

Ethical considerations
Institutional board approval for the study was obtained on 11 th December, 2019 from the Institute of Public Health, Health Research and Ethics Committee (IPH HREC) of the Obafemi Awolowo University with approval number IPH/OAU/12/1460.An extension of the approval was obtained on 5 th May, 2021 at the expiration of the initial approval when data collection has not been completed.Informed consent of the students and staff was obtained using the informed consent form formatted after the IPH HREC form.The participants were briefed on the study as a whistleblowing intention study.They were assured of their privacy and the confidentiality of their information.The informed consent forms also contained information on how their privacy and confidentiality would be assured.They were given the option of withdrawing from the study if they felt very uncomfortable during the process of data collection.The participants' informed consent was obtained by the field staff after the purpose of the study was explained and concerns clarified.However, due to the sensitivity of the questions, many participants declined appending their signatures on the consent form but preferred verbal consent without recording, which was granted them.In addition, written permission to collect data was also obtained from the administrators of the respective study institutions.
Addressing the emotional impact of the study During the planning phase of data collection, the team had a relationship with each of the university health centres via the institutions' administrators.There was a plan to refer any student or staff who may be emotionally unstable as a result of their past sexual violence experience to the school health centre, where they would be managed appropriately.Luckily, we didn't record any of such events; however, we received a particular questionnaire where a student wrote on it, "Ma, thank you for conducting this study; I had an experience of this with my father about two years ago."Unfortunately, we could not trace this participant because the questionnaire was de-identified.Also, our interaction with the field supervisors during their training showed that they were excited about the study, and none of them expressed any emotional disturbance resulting from their past victimisation experience.During the training of the field supervisors, efforts were made to inform them of the likely emotional reactions of some participants who must have been survivors of sexual violence.They were encouraged to refer such participants to the university health centre, where they would be managed appropriately.The field supervisors in turn trained the field workers that worked under them.

Data collection process
Due to the sensitivity of the study and the non-appealing nature of electronic data collection to many Nigerians as previously observed (Tella, 2015), we decided to use the paper-based questionnaire administration methods.The selected students were contacted by the field workers in their various lecture rooms and questionnaires were administered to them and same were retrieved immediately after completion.Some of them requested to return the questionnaire the following day.Also, some class representatives assisted in retrieving the questionnaires from those who made such request.The class representatives collecting filled-out questionnaires from participants was not a study option but an individual option.Some of the students insisted they could not fill and submit the questionnaires immediately; hence, they requested that they would submit to their class representatives for onward submission to the field workers.All efforts to dissuade them from this proved abortive, and we needed to respect their decisions.However, our observation on the field is that some of the participants did not see their responses as so confidential that their colleagues could not have access to them, more so that the bulk of the questions were on whistleblowing intention.
The questionnaires for the staff were administered to them in their various offices.Some of them returned the questionnaires immediately after completion while others requested to return them after some days.Some staff also dropped the questionnaires in their pigeon holes for pick up.In addition, two FGD sessions (one for students and the other for staff) were conducted in each of the schools giving a total of 35 FGD sessions (the staff in a particular school refused to participate in the FGD).For the students' FGD, they were carried out at the Student Union Government building except for one of the schools in which the school management insisted it should be conducted at the Students' Affairs building.The staff FGD were conducted at a designated venue agreed-on between the field supervisors and the participants.The principal investigator facilitated the sessions in support of other team members for the Southern regions.For the Northern regions, the field supervisor and the investigator from the North facilitated the FGD sessions.Recordings of the sessions were taken using Android phones while field notes were taken by other support staff.While the discussion was ongoing, the facilitator reflected on the statements of the participants to confirm their true position.After the discussion, members were asked to exercise some patience while they listened to the selected part of the interview as deemed fit by the facilitator.In fact, in a particular school, the staff group agreed and insisted that a participant must be allowed to record the discussion before the discussion can commence.According to them, this act is to ensure that they had evidence of what the discussion was all about if peradventure, anything goes wrong in the future.
The mixed-gender focus group discussion was adopted because, in class settings in higher education institutions, sexual violence is usually discussed among the students irrespective of their gender.We did not record any issue with the mixedgender group.The heterogenity 4 of the group is based on participants being officers of students' and staff's associations.
It is a general observation that males take on more leadership roles than females, which explains why there were more males in the group than females.

Data entry
Out of the 30,114 students' questionnaires and 7,524 staff questionnaires administered, a total of 21,937 students' questionnaires and 3,108 staff questionnaires were completely and properly filled and were adequate for data analysis giving a response rate of 72.8% for students and 41.3% for staff.There were eight data entry clerks who were recruited and trained in June, 2021.Two data analysts were also employed for the quantitative strand and these analysts trained the data entry clerks on how to enter the coded data from the questionnaires into Epi Info software version 3.1.Hands-on training was done using pre-coded demo-questionnaires.All the questionnaires were numbered and coded for data entry.
The clerks received different quantities of questionnaires on different days for entry into Epi info software.A standby research office assistant was also employed to assign the questionnaires to the clerks and also ensured that correct quantities of the questionnaires were returned after data entry.Data entry was done within a period of seven months.
Following the entry of the data and the merging of the data files from the clerks by the analysts, the data were then exported to SPSS version 27 (IBM Corp. Released, 2020).

Dataset
The quantitative dataset (Ogunfowokan et al., 2023) consists of 44 variables for the students and 42 variables for the staff that are grouped into six: (i) attitude to whistleblowing; (ii) subjective norm; (iii) self-efficacy; (iv) whistleblowing intention; (v) sexual violence experience; and (vi) socio-demographic characteristics.However, the staff dataset does not contain the sexual violence experience data.The list of all the variables and their corresponding response options are found in Tables 3 and 4. The qualitative dataset contains transcripts on responses to the six probing questions used for the FGD which are: (i) sexual violence cases in the school; (ii) institutional reporting systems; (iii) factors influencing intention; (iv) preferred whistleblowing strategies; vi) protection of whistleblower; and (vii) effectiveness of internal whistleblowing.

Dataset validation
During sampling of the schools, some areas in the Northeast and Northwest regions were avoided because of insurgency.After sampling, two schools were dropped because the field workers could not gain access to the schools due to ongoing insurgency in the areas.Also the study was conducted in government owned schools thereby excluding higher institutions owned by private individuals, organizations and State Governments.Other higher institutions like diploma schools of nursing, technical and specialized higher education schools among others were also not captured in the study.Hence, generalization of the findings from this study should only be for Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education that are Federal government-owned.Also, FGD for staff could not be conducted in a particular university because the Reporting sexual violence controls perpetration A2 Whistleblowing enhances the public interest A3 Whistleblowing for sexual violence reporting is to prove loyalty to the school A4 Whistleblowing is the moral thing to do A5 Whistleblowing enhances organization's sustainability A6 Whistleblowing is a way of exercising true conscience A7 Whistleblowing is to enable student to be a moral agent A8 Whistleblowing is the management tool to protect students A9 Whistleblowing is to make perpetrators liable for their wrong doings A10

Neighbours B16
The public B17 Friends B18 School Administrators B19

Self-efficacy
School will ignore my reporting C20 My reporting won't make any difference C21 I will be subjected to harassment by my colleagues C22 I will be isolated by my friends C23 1 will be closely monitored C24 I will be charged for breach of loyalty to the school C25

Whistleblowing intention
Rate the extent to which the behaviour is offensive D26 Rate the likelihood that you will report D27 Rate the likelihood that your schoolmates/classmates will report D28 Rate the extent to which the behavior of the course-mate is offensive D29 Rate the likelihood that you will report D30 Rate the likelihood that your schoolmates/classmates will report D31 Rate the extent to which the behaviour is offensive D32 Rate the likelihood that you will report D33 Rate the likelihood that your schoolmates/classmates will report D34

Whistleblowing reduces incidence of sexual violence A1
Reporting sexual violence controls perpetration A2 Whistleblowing enhances the school community interest A3 Whistleblowing for sexual violence reporting is to prove loyalty to the school A4 Whistleblowing is the moral thing to do A5 Whistleblowing enhances organization's sustainability A6 Whistleblowing is a way of exercising true conscience A7 Whistleblowing is to enable employee to be a moral agent A8 Whistleblowing is the management tool to protect students A9 Whistleblowing is to make perpetrators liable for their wrongdoings A10

School management B13
Subordinate B14 Office mate B15

Neighbours B16
The public B17 Friends B18 Family members B19

Self-efficacy
School will ignore my reporting C20 My reporting won't make any difference C21 I will be subjected to harassment by my colleagues C22 I will be isolated by my friends C23 I will be closely monitored C24 I will be charged for breach of loyalty to the school C25 I will be demoted C26 executive officers for the staff unions did not give their consent to participate despite all pleas and provision of information about the study.

Quantitative dataset
The questionnaires that were brought from the field were assessed for completeness by the research office assistants and two other young people employed for the job.All incompletely filled questionnaires were discarded.Consistency checks were done by ensuring that the data on each of questionnaires were consistent.For example, on the staff questionnaire, an academic staff who reported to be a Senior Lecturer later ticked the non-academic status had the non-academic status corrected.Duplicate and outliers on the dataset were also observed and compared with the original raw data on the corresponding questionnaires and corrections were made where necessary.Missing data were attended to by using mean substitution as documented by Kang (2013).However, we were aware of the bias related to self-reported data collection most especially on a sensitive issue as sexual violence and this may impact on the quality of the dataset.Also, we could not do external validation of the data set as we could not lay our hands on a similar dataset on any of the variables.

Qualitative dataset
A most profound validation for the qualitative dataset that we carried out is the data member checking.During and after the interview, participants were regularly instructed to confirm their statements as true reflections of their opinions by listening to the recordings.Facilitators were also encouraged to clarify participants' opinions from the statements that they made to avoid biases.Peer debriding was also done among the investigators, supervisor and the research assistants immediately after concluding an FDG session to discuss the findings in proper perspective and to also avoid biases.All these efforts were to ensure the trustworthiness of the qualitative data (Stahl and King, 2020).

Reflexivity statement
There are six investigators and two research mentees in the research team.The team consists of individuals who are academics from four universities spread across three regions in Nigeria.The research mentees were Ph.D. students

Whistleblowing intention
Rate the extent to which the behaviour is offensive D26 Rate the likelihood that you will report D28 Rate the likelihood that your colleagues will report D29 Rate the extent to which the behavior of the course-mate is offensive D30 Rate the likelihood that you will report D31 Rate the likelihood that your colleagues will report D32 Rate the extent to which the behaviour is offensive D33 Rate the likelihood that you will report D34 Rate the likelihood that your colleagues will report D35

Course of Study F42
Faculty/Field F43 Level F44

Name of Institution
Type of Institution Region (a male and female) in community health nursing, of whom one of them focused on adolescent boys' sexual violence perpetration in her Ph.D. project while the other focused on work-related stress among nurses.Both mentees were trained in the use of qualitative and quantitative data collection methods for their M.Sc.and Ph.D. projects.The six investigators (three males and three females) had Ph.D. certificates in diverse specialised areas, which include health promotion, civic education, gender and policy studies, demography and population studies, medical sociology, and community health.Some of the investigators were trained in phenomenology studies, while others were trained in quantitative data collection.The strengths of the investigators were identified and made use of during data collection.The principal investigator, who is a community health nurse expert, facilitated the FGD sessions in the southern regions.The assigned field supervisor for the Northern region, who is a sociologist and a demographer, facilitated the FGD for the Northern region in conjunction with the investigator from the North, who is a medial sociologist.All these investigators had at one point in time involved in quantitative and qualitative studies.

Limitations
Some schools in the northern part of the country were intentionally avoided as a result of the insurgency going on in those areas at the time of conducting the study.Also, two schools that were sampled initially were replaced at the point of data collection when the field workers could not gain access to the schools due to insurgency.Other higher institutions, like diploma schools of nursing technical schools and specialised higher education schools, among others, were not captured in the study.Hence, generalisation of the findings from this study should only be made for students in the universities polytechnics, and colleges of education.The staff in one of the institutions refused to participate in the FGD despite all efforts to convince them that the study is solely for research purposes with no implication for any individual.discussions.The procedure for data collection was adequately described and appropriate for the study.
The study and the report writing meet the criteria of a scientific project.
Is the rationale for creating the dataset(s) clearly described?Yes Are the protocols appropriate and is the work technically sound?Yes

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others? Yes
Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?Yes Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Behavioral science I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard.
below).This point needs amendment, critical discussion and explanation.
There is no information given relating to the ethics of carrying out research on sexual violence specifically, such as what support information was given to participants; how focus groups were held in a way to make them safe for survivors of sexual violence to participate; and what training/support was given to staff working on the project (see further detail below).

2.
Below, I go through various points that I suggest should be addressed in this data note, including the two major issues identified above as well as various lesser concerns.

Use of language
In order for the article to be in dialogue with international literature in this area, there are some points of language that could be clarified.Most notably the terms 'blow the whistle' and 'whistleblower' appear to be used synonymously with reporting.
I assume that the term 'whistleblowing' is the term used in Nigeria to describe reporting sexual violence to an institution.However, whistleblowing has quite a different meaning from reporting in some contexts; for example in the UK whistleblowing is a protected act, meaning that there are legal protections for whistleblowers, but speaking out only counts as whistleblowing if it is deemed to be 'in the public interest'.Reporting individual experiences of sexual violence might not necessarily be deemed to be in the public interest.As such, further information about terminology is needed to clarify what is meant by this term.
There are also some instances of inaccurate language or claims that could be framed more carefully: 'the magnanimity of sexual violence in educational institutions in Nigeria' (paragraph 1).I don't think magnanimity is the right word here.
○ 'In cases of sexual violence, being a culturally sensitive issue, a reprisal attack on the whistleblower is inevitable.'While reprisal is probably not uncommon, to say that it is inevitably is a very strong claim.I would suggest the authors qualify this claim, explain why they are taking such a strong position, or add a citation.

Theoretical framework
The statement that 'we are of the opinion that an individual must have intention to blow the whistle to report sexual violence before carrying out the task' needs more explanation and needs to be positioned within wider research on reporting sexual violence.More generally, this could contribute to a justification of the use of the Theory of Planned Behavior that is used to frame the study.I'm not yet convinced that this theory is helpful in the context of this study.In fact, reporting sexual violence is sometimes opportunistic, or occurs by accident or is taken by someone other than the survivor (Lievore D, et. al. 2005 [ref 4]; Bull A, et. al. 2022 [ref 2];Brooks-Hay et. al. 2020 [ref 1]).Furthermore, 'intention' in this sentence is perhaps glossing over some of the complexities of reporting; as I have outlined (Bull, 2022), there are both immediate catalysts as well as underlying rationales for reporting sexual violence or harassment to higher education institutions; this term 'intention' could therefore be critically discussed in more detail.
Similarly, the claim that 'for an individual to have intention to blow the whistle for reporting sexual violence act, he/she must have a positive attitude towards whistleblowing as an effective mechanism' is also questionable in relation to existing literature; studies (as cited above) show that people report sexual harassment and violence to their institution primarily to protect themselves and others from further harm.Therefore it is possible that reporting parties are taking the step of reporting as they have no other options, rather than because they have a positive attitude towards reporting as an effective mechanism.

Qualitative methods
The methods are clearly explained but could benefit from a rationale as to why focus group discussions were seen as appropriate, and why mixed-gender focus groups were chosen.For such a sensitive topic, as the authors note, perhaps women-only focus groups or interviews might have been more appropriate, allowing interviewees to speak more openly?This would also have overcome the issue of having more male focus group participants in the focus groups.
In addition, the decision to hold a hypothetical discussion about whether participants would report, while a reasonable approach to take, has some limitations.The authors could therefore justify the decision to include hypothetical discussions about reporting only, and critically discuss the implications of this decision for the findings.

Questionnaire
The description states that the article adapted the Sexual Experiences Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV) scale.However, the questions in the questionnaire (linked at the bottom of the article) are not from the SEQ-SFV and they do not follow good practice in sexual violence research, as they use the word 'rape' rather than behaviorally-specific language.
As such, it is inaccurate to state that they are an adaptation of the SES-SFV.Furthermore, the questions used will heavily underestimate prevalence of sexual violence as sexual violence survivors will often not use the term 'rape' even when they have experienced behaviors that do indeed fall under legal definitions of rape.This is a very serious issue in the research design which needs critical discussion and explanation.
The Sexual Violence Whistleblowing Intentions Questionnaire needs further information; was this developed/adapted by the authors themselves?If so, could they include more detail about its development.If not, could they link to where they have obtained it from.
The questionnaire only asks about participants' intentions to 'blow the whistle' relating to third party incidents of sexual violence that they hear about.However, it is not the norm for HEIs to take action on third party reports.Therefore, it is important to explain why the authors chose to ask only about third party reporting rather than reporting by victim-survivors themselves.

Are sufficient details of methods and materials provided to allow replication by others? Yes
Are the datasets clearly presented in a useable and accessible format?Yes Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Sexual harassment, sexual violence, higher education, gender inequalities, class inequalities, music education I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to state that I do not consider it to be of an acceptable scientific standard, for reasons outlined above.
Author Response 12 Mar 2024

Adesola Ogunfowokan
Dear Dr. Bull, Thanks for taking the time to review this manuscript.Find below our comments on the review.

Main concerns
The study is not a sexual violence prevalence study but rather an intention study.
There are many studies in Nigeria that have explored the prevalence of sexual violence among higher education students (Onayase, 2019;Duru et al., 2018;Akinbode & Ayodeji, 2018;Adogu et al., 2014;and Ado et al., 2010, to mention a few); hence, we did not see the need to conduct a full prevalence study on sexual violence using the full SES-SFV.We adapted from the scale using the response options 'How many times in the past 12 months -0, 1, 2, 3+.Three questions were then constructed similar to Question 10 on the scale: Have you been raped before?The three questions were constructed to represent rape, attempted rape, and sexual harassment.The essence of this was to confirm in our study that sexual violence still occurs among higher education students. 1.

2.
The participants were briefed on the study as a whistleblowing intention study.They were assured of their privacy and the confidentiality of their information.The consent forms also contained information on how their privacy and confidentiality would be assured.They were given the option of withdrawing from the study if they felt very uncomfortable during the process of data collection.During the planning phase of data collection, the team had a relationship with each of the University Health Centres via the institutions' administrators.There was a plan to refer any student or staff who may be emotionally unstable as a result of their past sexual violence ○ experience to the school health centre, where they would be managed appropriately.Luckily, we didn't record any of such events; however, we got a particular questionnaire where a student wrote on it, "Ma, thank you for conducting this study; I had an experience of this with my father about two years ago."Unfortunately, we could not trace this participant because the questionnaire was de-identified.
The staff working on the project were selected across the six regions of the country.The field supervisors were trained by the research team, and our interaction with them showed that they were excited about the study, and none of them expressed any emotional disturbance resulting from their past victimisation experience.During the training of the field supervisors, efforts were made to inform them of the likely emotional reactions of some participants, who must have been survivors of sexual violence.They were encouraged to refer such participants to the University Health Centre, where they would be managed appropriately.The field supervisors in turn trained the field workers that worked under them.

Whistleblowing context in Nigeria
Whistleblowing is a term that is just gaining ground in Nigeria.The whistleblowing policy was officially launched by the Federal Ministry of Finance on December 22, 2016, for the purpose of recovering several billions of stolen public funds (Ogbu, 2017).Following the success of the policy in financial systems, it was then recommended in various quarters as a mechanism that could be effective for reporting corruption and other wrongdoings, including sexual violence, in the country.Reporting sexual violence in the Nigerian context is always 'in the public interest', especially among young people.We are quite aware that whistleblowing is a legal issue.Whistleblower protection bill was passed in Nigeria on December 14, 2022 (Angbulu, 2022;Dec 14).As of today, in Nigeria, the understanding of whistleblowing is that anyone who is aware of the incident can blow the whistle.However, at the writing stage of the research proposal, we were not aware of any higher education institutions that had domesticated the whistleblowing policy.This particular study was then designed to explore the intention of students and staff in HEIs to use whistleblowing strategies for sexual violence if finally deployed in educational institutions.Looking through the manuscript, we shall ensure that the synonymous use of the terms 'blow the whistle', 'whistleblower', and' reporting' is corrected appropriately.

Theoretical Framework
Drawing from the porous nature of the security systems in Nigeria, the stigmatisation of sexual violence survivors, and the victim-blaming attitude in some quarters, it is assumed that whoever wants to blow the whistle for sexual violence must count the cost.Hence, the assertion by the authors that having a positive attitude towards the effectiveness of whistleblowing mechanisms could be a basis for intention for whistleblowing.

Qualitative methods
The mixed-gender focus group discussion was adopted because, in class settings in higher education institutions, sexual violence is usually discussed among the students irrespective of their gender.We did not record any issues with the mixedgender group.The homogeneity of the group is based on participants being officers of students' and staff's associations.It is a general observation that males take on more leadership roles than females, which explains why there were more males in the group than females.

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The questions in the FGD guide are not personal to the participants but, general questions.Hence, we are of the opinion that personal interview is not relevant in this case.

Questionnaire
We adapted the questionnaire as stated in the data note: "The questions on attitude, subjective norm, and self-efficacy were adapted from the work of Zakaria et al. (2016).The sexual violence experiences component was adapted from the Sexual Experiences Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV) scale developed by Koss et al. (2006).The SES-SFV scale assessed sexual violence victimisation in the past 12 months and the number of occurrences.The whistleblowing intention component of the questionnaire was formulated using three vignettes, which were adapted from the work of Ahmad (2011).The response to 'Main Concern 1' above also explains the use of the SES-SFV.

Vignette
The vignette section of the questionnaire depicted the participants as third-party whistleblowers and not as survivors.It is assumed that survivors will report when they are victimised, but a third-party report is not the usual practice in HEIs.
Whistleblowing action can be taken by a third party and not necessarily the survivor, and we are of the opinion that the HEIs should be getting used to third party whistleblowing and also take action when there is evidence.

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The rating for the vignette will be explained in the next revision of the manuscript.

Ethics
The class representatives collecting filled-out questionnaires from participants was not a study option but an individual option.The questionnaires were administered to the students in their classrooms, but some insisted they could not fill and submit them immediately; hence, they requested that they would submit to their class representatives for onward submission to the field workers.All efforts to dissuade them from this proved abortive, and we needed to respect their decisions.However, our observation on the field is that some of the participants did not see their responses as so confidential that their colleagues could not have access to them, more so that the bulk of the questions were on whistleblowing intention.

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Other ethical issues are addressed under 'Main Concern 2' above.

Pilot Study
During the pilot study, the officers of the academic staff association did not participate in the FGD despite various efforts put in place as documented in the published reports (Ogunfowokan et al., 2023).What we did then was to recruit academic staff members who were not necessarily officers to participate in the study.After the pilot study, we planned to use this method in any of the schools in case we ran into similar problems.Fortunately, we never experienced such problems except for a particular school where the entire officers of the association, both academic and non-academic, did not participate hence, we did not conduct FGD in the school.

Member Checking
While the discussion was ongoing, the facilitator reflected on the statements given by the members to confirm their true position.After the discussion, members were asked to exercise some patience while they listened to the selected part of the interview as deemed fit by the facilitator.In fact, in a particular school, the staff group agreed and insisted that a participant must be allowed to record the discussion before the discussion can commence so that if peradventure anything went wrong, they would have evidence of what the discussion was all about.

Reflexivity statement
The essence of giving information about the researchers was to ensure that the participants were rest assured that the researchers were university staff and not policymakers or groups of people who may use their responses to indict them.

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The claim 'to avoid bias' will be removed from this section.

Language use
Observed inaccurate languages will be corrected in the manuscript.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Framework for the study.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Map of the six geopolitical zones showing selected schools for the study.Source: the authors.
Number of time attempted to be rape in the past 12 months E35 Number of time raped in the past 12 months E36 Number of time sexually harassed in the past 12 months E37

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Whistleblowing has been referred to as a planned behaviour, and the Theory of Planned Behaviour has been used by several authors, such as Tarjo et al. (2019),Zakaria et al. (2016),Owusu et al. (2020), andWahyuni et al. (2021), to support whistleblowing intention.Since our study looked at intention for whistleblowing for sexual violence and also assessed the subjective norm and self-efficacy of the participants, which are precursors to planned behaviour, we are of the opinion that ○ the Theory of Planned Behaviour is the best framework for the study.

Table 2 .
Cronbach's alpha statistics for study questionnaire during the pilot and main studies.

Table 3 .
Variables included in the students' dataset.

Table 4 .
Variables included in the staff dataset.