Victim statistics indicate that females aged 16 to 24 years are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than at all other age groups. In the vast majority of assault cases, the perpetrator is a date or acquaintance. Despite the strong correlation between alcohol or illicit drug use and sexual violence among adolescents, few studies have examined the contributing role of alcohol use to the violent event. Existing research has been compromised by 1) a failure to sample sufficiently large numbers of minority adolescent and young adults to examine differences among women of different age and ethnicity; 2) studies' exclusion of female teenage dropouts and young adult women not attending college; 3) use of vague measures of alcohol use and different time frames for recall; 4) a failure to examine the contributing role of polydrug use; and 5) an absence of studies that investigate the role of alcohol use at different stages of the dating relationship.
The specific aims of this Small Grant project are 1) to evaluate the contributing role of concurrent alcohol and polydrug use in the reported occurrence of date rape and other sexual violence within a large sample of sexually active females attending primary care clinics; 2) to determine whether the role of alcohol and polydrug use in sexual violence varies according to the dating relationship (casual, dating, and exclusive partner); and 3) to examine differences in Aims 1 and 2 among women of different age (14 to 19 vs. 20 to 24 years) and ethnicity (Caucasian, African- American, and Mexican-American). Using a cross-sectional design, 900 subjects (300 from each ethnicity; 450 from each age group) will complete a structured questionnaire during a health care visit. The questionnaire will cover any recent occurrence of date rape, a description of her most recent date, and her worst experience with sexual violence in the last 12 months. Risk factors for sexual violence, including concurrent alcohol and polydrug use, will be identified by comparing characteristics of 1) victim's recent nonviolent vs. sexually violent date, and 2) the most recent dates of subjects who had and had not experienced sexual violence. We hypothesize that: 1) the proportion of date/acquaintance rape and other coercive sexual violence that involve concurrent alcohol or polydrug use will be higher among a) adolescents as compared with young adults; b) Caucasian and Mexican-American as compared with African-American women; and c) women in casual as compared with dating or exclusive relationships; and 2) concurrent alcohol or polydrug use will be independently associated with date rape and other coercive sexual violence when controlling for other known risk factors using multivariate analyses.
| Rickert, Vaughn I; Wiemann, Constance M; Vaughan, Roger D (2005) Disclosure of date/acquaintance rape: who reports and when. J Pediatr Adolesc Gynecol 18:17-24 |
| Rickert, Vaughn I; Wiemann, Constance M; Vaughan, Roger D et al. (2004) Rates and risk factors for sexual violence among an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 158:1132-9 |
