Alcohol Use and Its Relationship to Sexual Assault among Sexual Minority Women

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that bisexual women experience sexual assault at higher rates then heterosexual and lesbian women, and that alcohol use is a significant factor in predicting adult sexual assault in homosexual women (Walters & Breiding 2013; Han et al. 2013). However, understudied is the relationship between alcohol usage and sexual assault of bisexual women. Due to the significantly higher reported rates of assault for bisexual women, risk factors for bisexual women, including alcohol use, should be explored. The present study examines sexual assault rate differences between lesbian, heterosexual and bisexual women and men, with the aim of determining to what extent the predictors of sexual assault vary across group. For the analysis, I draw upon data from Wave IV of The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, collected in 2008 and 2009. Preliminary analyses indicated that bisexual women are more likely to experience both non-physically forced and physically forced assault as compared to their heterosexual counterparts, while homosexual men are more likely to experience sexual assault from a caregiver.

Author

• Emily Blakeslee, Muhlenberg College