College Women’s Experiences of Rape: Associations with Alcohol Use in Large Groups

The contexts of women’s alcohol use may affect sexual victimization risk (Combs-Lane & Smith, 2002; Mustaine & Tewksbury, 2002). For example, using alcohol in bars is associated with recent sexual victimization (Parks & Miller, 1997). We define sexual victimization as rape, or physically forced or incapacitated sexual intercourse (Bagwell-Gray et al., 2005; Messman-Moore et al., 2008). Experiences of rape are high among college women (Krebs et al., 2009). These experiences negatively affect women’s health and educational achievement (Gidycz et al., 2008; Jordan et al., 2014; Ullman, 2007), and are costly to public health (Post et al., 2002). Alcohol use is a robust, longitudinal predictor of rape among college women (Adams-Curtis & Forbes, 2004; Combs-Lane & Smith, 2002; Testa & Livingston, 2009), and alcohol use in large group contexts, such as bars or parties, may increase risk (Testa & Livingston, 2009). We explore the association between alcohol use in large group contexts and experiences of rape among college women. We predict that more frequent alcohol use in large groups will be associated with higher likelihood of rape across college, above and beyond alcohol use frequency.

Participants were traditionally aged female college students (N = 302; 41.4% White/European American, 27.8% Asian/Asian American/Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, 26.5% Hispanic/Latino American, 26.2% Black/African American) who completed a baseline survey and up to 14 consecutive daily surveys for seven consecutive semesters beginning in the Fall of their first year. In Semesters 3, 5, and 7, participants reported whether they were raped via physical force or incapacitation in the past year; these reports were aggregated to determine if participants were victimized across college. In Semesters 1 and 2, participants reported their daily alcohol use and whether they used alcohol in a large group. We calculated the mean across days for these two variables. We will perform a logistic regression model with sexual victimization as the outcome to test the current hypothesis that alcohol use in a large group is associated with higher likelihood of rape above and beyond frequency of alcohol use.

The current study contributes to the literature by assessing risk across three years, whereas longitudinal studies typically measure risk across one year (Bryan et al., 2016; Mouilso et al., 2012). In addition, although previous research suggests it is difficult to separate effects of alcohol use frequency from the social context in which alcohol use occurs (Testa & Livingston, 2009), this study separates these constructs via measurement of the large group alcohol use context and by controlling for alcohol use frequency. We will discuss implications for university policy and sexual violence risk.