Despite the fact that sexual assault often has profound lifelong detrimental effects on the psychological and physical well-being of its victims (Koss & Kilpatrick, 2001; Resnick, Kilpatrick, Dansky, Saunders, & Best, 1993), sexual assault among adolescent girls continues to be a silent epidemic in the United States. Adolescent girls between the ages of 14-17 have the highest rate of sexual assault according to crime report statistics (Snyder, 2000); yet only half of all adolescent female victims will tell anyone an assault has occurred (Davis, 1993; Davis & Lee, 1996) and only 6% will report sexual assault to the authorities (Ageton, 1983). While research on sexual assault among college students indicate that alcohol is present in approximately half of all sexual assault cases, and has both distal and proximal influences on sexual assault (Abbey, Zawacki, Buck, Clinton, & McAuslan, 2001; Abbey, 2002), we continue to know very little about the prevalence and role of alcohol in sexual assault cases between adolescent acquaintances. The purpose of this study is to begin to address the limited understanding of this topic by examining the prevalence and correlates of alcohol-related sexual assault between adolescent acquaintances in a sample of middle and high school students. We propose to conduct a cross-sectional, web-based survey among approximately 1,250 ethnically and socio-economically diverse middle and high school students (approximately 13 to 18 years of age) in which students are asked to provide a retrospective account of sexual assault victimization and perpetration by acquaintances.
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