Background: Sexual violence, including childhood sexual abuse and adolescent/adult sexual assault, is a major public health concern, especially for college women. Sexual violence is associated with numerous negative consequences, including difficulties relating to sexual functioning. The current systematic review aimed to synthesize the existing research literature examining the association between sexual violence on sexual functioning among college women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial reactions to disclosure of sexual victimization play an important role in the process of recovery. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the impact of online disclosure of sexual victimization. The sample for this qualitative study ( = 17) focused on participants who shared their experiences with disclosing about their sexual victimization online and the reactions received in these spaces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Feeling in control in a sexual situation may vary as a function of contextual factors, such as whether alcohol is used prior to a sexual experience. Alcohol protective behavioral strategies (PBS) reduce adverse alcohol-related outcomes and may promote greater sense of control in sexual situations. It was hypothesized that, at the day level, (1) greater alcohol use would be associated with lower likelihood of feeling in control in sexual situations, (2) more PBS would be associated with a greater likelihood of feeling in control, and (3) more PBS would weaken the negative association between alcohol use and sexual control.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Sexual aggression and heavy drinking are interrelated concerns among college men. As a result, integrated prevention interventions now exist to address co-occurring risk for sexual aggression and heavy drinking. The Sexual Assault and Alcohol Feedback and Education (SAFE) program is a multi-session integrated alcohol and sexual assault prevention program for college men that addresses alcohol use, sexual activity, social norms, alcohol-related sexual consequences, understanding of consent, and engagement in bystander intervention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Interpers Violence
September 2024
The current study presents preliminary efficacy findings of a pilot randomized controlled trial of Positive Change ( ). utilizes personalized normative feedback to target alcohol use, sexual assault (SA) victimization, SA perpetration, and bystander intervention tailored for heterosexual cisgender men, heterosexual cisgender women, and sexual and gender-minoritized (SGM) groups. Participants included 165 undergraduate students aged 18 to 25 years old from a large public university in the Southwestern U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe #MeToo movement of 2017 ushered in a wave of online disclosure of sexual victimization. The ways in which people respond to the disclosure of sexual victimization can play an important role in a survivor's recovery process. This study conducted an exploratory structural equation model (ESEM) of a questionnaire aimed at characterizing the ways in which others respond to the disclosure of sexual victimization in online spaces.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Addressing hazing within the U.S. Military has become a critical concern to safeguard the well-being of service members; recent attempts to assess hazing prevalence in the military have been unsuccessful due to under representative data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study evaluates a single-day youth-designed sexual assault prevention summit for adolescents. Attendees ( = 284) completed pre-and post-summit surveys addressing 1) confidence in consent knowledge; 2) perceived capability to respond to someone who was assaulted or harassed; 3) awareness of Title IX rights; 4) perceived capacity to get help for a survivor; 5) perceived acceptability of sexual coercion; 6) endorsement of belief that it is wrong to stop sexual activity once it starts; 7) perceived seriousness of sharing nude photos without permission; and, 8) perceived prevalence of false accusations of sexual violence. At post-summit, participants reported increased perceived confidence in consent knowledge, increased perceived capacity to respond to a survivor, increased awareness of Title IX rights, and increased perceived capacity to get help for a survivor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Prevention programs that address the intersecting health problems of risky alcohol use, unsafe sexual behaviors, and sexual violence are needed. This pilot project assessed the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a two-session group-based intervention, Sex Positive Lifestyles: Addressing Alcohol & Sexual Health (SPLASH), targeting these highly interconnected risks for college students across genders.
Method: A total of 217 participants (51.
This article describes the development of the Verbally Pressured Sexual Exploitation module of the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES)-Victimization (introduced by Koss et al., 2024). This module assesses the use of verbal or nonphysical, paraverbal pressure to obtain sexual acts without freely given permission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Sexual Experiences Survey [SES] is considered the gold standard measure of non-consensual sexual experiences. This article introduces a new victimization version [SES-V] developed by a multidisciplinary collaboration, the first revision since 2007. The 2024 SES-V is designed to measure the construct of sexual exploitation since the 14th birthday.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Sexual Experiences Survey-Victimization (SES-V; see Koss et al., 2024) revises the prior 2007 Sexual Experiences Survey-Short Form Victimization (SES-SFV) in many ways, including expanded measurement of verbally pressured and illegal sexual exploitation, as well as the addition of items that assess being made to perform a sexual act or to penetrate another person sexually. The current article describes two initial validity studies of the SES-V.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring young adulthood, drinking and sexual behaviors are both normative and inextricably linked. While this association is well documented, little is known about how students define positive and negative drinking-related sexual experiences. Thirty-five undergraduates participated in a focus group about sexual experiences in the context of drinking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOften, perpetrators of sexual violence first aggress in their teens. Presently, very little is known about environmental factors that may influence adolescents' engagement in sexual aggression. Drawing upon data collected at 27 high schools in the Northeast United States, this study is the first to test the association between community-level factors and male adolescents' sexual aggression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Interpersonal trauma is a risk factor for a wide array of adverse mental health outcomes, including substance use. Research has begun investigating the role of shame in the intersection between substance use and interpersonal trauma. The current systematic review summarizes the existing literature documenting the relation among shame, substance use, and interpersonal trauma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe current study documents the correlates associated with the severity of sexual victimization among women enrolled in a 2-year community college. Comparisons between women with a history of severe sexual victimization (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: This study aimed to investigate the association between alcohol and cannabis use patterns and bystander intervention for sexual and relationship violence risk among college students who have used cannabis in the past year. The study tested two hypotheses: (1) Reports of bystander opportunities will differ based on participants' alcohol and cannabis use patterns, and (2) among those who report bystander opportunities, reports of bystander behaviors will differ based on their alcohol and cannabis use patterns.
Method: Participants were 870 students recruited from two large, minority-serving universities in the United States who reported past-year cannabis use.
: Sexual assault and heavy alcohol use are prevalent and interrelated public health concerns on university campuses. Surprisingly, however, few alcohol harm reduction interventions address this intersection to help students reduce both personal and community risks for sexual assault in college drinking contexts. : In the current study, students (ages 18-24) shared strategies they use to protect themselves and others from sexual assault in college drinking contexts, as well as challenges to implementing these strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocial reactions to the disclosure of sexual victimization are critical to post-assault recovery. The popular social media hashtag "#MeToo" resulted in numerous survivors of sexual victimization disclosing their experience online. Whereas previous research has examined the association between social reactions to of sexual victimization and factors commonly associated with adjustment among survivors - such as coping and social support - research is needed to examine correlates of social reactions to of sexual victimization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohol Clin Exp Res (Hoboken)
November 2023
Background: Sexual assault (SA) is experienced by a substantial proportion of emerging adult college students and is associated with elevated rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use. This study examines the mediating role of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in the associations among SA severity, drinking to cope with anxiety, and average weekly drinks while considering the moderating roles of gender identity and sexual orientation.
Methods: A total of 2160 college students who were diverse in gender (cisgender women, 64.