Alcohol Expectancy, Substance Use and Sexual Victimization among Female and Male College Students

• In Event: 366 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 22. Medical/Health I

Abstract

College students have high rates of heavy episodic drinking and this dangerous behavior is strongly linked to sexual victimization. Though research has examined various risk factors for sexual assault, few studies have studied the various pathways through which alcohol may affect sexual assault as well as simultaneously examining such pathways among both females and males. As such, the current study uses path analyses to examine whether alcohol expectancies mediate the relationship between social factors (i.e., amount friends drink) and drinking behavior and drug use and experiencing sexual victimization. This study includes a college sample of 704 males and females from a large Midwestern university. For females, sexual victimization was positively associated with child sexual abuse, hooking up more often, heavier drinking, and greater alcohol expectancy. For males, sexual victimization was positively correlated with child sexual abuse, hooking up more often, heavy drinking behavior, and drug use. A comparison of all of the paths for males and females only revealed one significant difference indicating that the path from alcohol expectancy to sexual victimization operates differentially by gender. College students have certain social expectations when they drink alcohol and if they believe they can achieve desired outcomes by drinking, not only will this increase their alcohol consumption but it also increases the risk that they will become a victim of sexual assault.

Authors

• Kimberly A. Tyler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Rachel Marie Schmitz, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Scott A. Adams, University of Nebraska-Lincoln