Can a Training Intervention Increase Positive Social Support for Victims of Campus Sexual Assault?

• In Event: Assessing Sexual Assault Trainings and the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative

Abstract

One out of five college women experience SA prior to graduation. Victimization research has found a variety of adverse physical and mental health sequelae from SA, and the CDC recognizes violence against women, inclusive of SA, as a public health problem. Teaching people how to respond supportively to disclosure of SA could yield widespread benefits for health and wellbeing. Because most victims disclose sexual assault to friends and family rather than law enforcement or formal support organizations, current efforts to support SA victims focused on formal organizations do not benefit most victims. Therefore, interventions within participants' social networks may hold promise. This study develops and tests a training intervention designed to increase positive social support for SA victims (providing emotional support, informational support, tangible aid, and the absence of negative reactions to disclosure) (Ullman 2000). This study tests the intervention across sorority chapters, a population that experiences disproportionately high levels of SA victimization. This study collects and analyzes longitudinal data regarding participant rape myth acceptance, prior victimization, previous experiences receiving a disclosure of sexual assault from a sorority sister, and conditional questions about how participants have responded to someone else’s SA disclosure, and how others responded to their SA disclosure.

Author

• Tara K. Streng-Schroeter, University of Colorado