Heather Littleton

Sexual risk behavior is common among college women, but little work has identified risk patterns or correlates. The current study utilized latent profile analysis to identify sexual risk patterns among 1,534 college women. Results supported four classes: low sexual risk (68.2%), moderate sexual risk: party hookups (11.0%), moderate sexual risk: risky partners (17.6%), and high sexual risk (3.1%). Membership in the moderate and high-risk classes were associated with coping motives, drinking, and risky peer norms, while membership in the low risk class was associated with sexual satisfaction and low peer approval of risky sex. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)–based interventions, including those administered via telepsychology, represent efficacious posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatments. Despite demonstrated efficacy, limited research has examined mechanisms of change for CBT. We examined trauma‐related cognitions and coping as treatment mechanisms among 46 women who completed a randomized clinical trial of a CBT‐based, telepsychology‐delivered interactive program for rape survivors. The results indicated that both the interactive program, d = 1.5, and the active control condition, a psychoeducational website, d = 1.4, resulted in large reductions in posttest PTSD symptoms. Analysis of residual gain scores showed that reductions in the three types of assessed trauma‐related cognitions were strongly related to reductions in PTSD symptoms among women assigned to the interactive program, rs = .60–.79, but only weakly related to symptom reduction among those assigned to active control, rs = .06–.31. The results also suggest that increases in trauma‐related approach coping were weakly related to reductions in PTSD symptoms among participants in the interactive program, rs = −.16 and −.17, but, conversely, decreases in trauma‐related approach coping were weakly related to reductions in PTSD symptoms among those in the active control group, rs = .07 and .28. Reductions in avoidance coping were modestly related to reductions in PTSD symptoms among women in the interactive program, rs = .38 and .38, but unrelated to changes in PTSD symptoms among those assigned to the active control, rs = .03 and .05. Implications for future work examining mechanisms of change for PTSD treatments are discussed.

Rape survivors engage in more risky sexual behavior and report more sexual dissatisfaction and dysfunction than those without a rape history. However, little research has examined possible mechanisms to explain the relation between rape and sexual health outcomes. Therefore, the current study examined sexual motives as one mechanism to explain why survivors engage in more risk behavior and report lower sexual satisfaction. We hypothesized that rape survivors would be more likely to report engaging in sex for a variety of potentially maladaptive motives, including to reduce their negative affect, improve their self-esteem, and obtain approval or avoid censure from their peers and sexual partners. Engaging in sex for these reasons was then hypothesized to mediate the relation between rape history and sexual risk behavior as well as sexual satisfaction. These hypotheses were tested among 1,534 sexually active college women. Results supported that all four sexual motives mediated the relation between rape history and risky sexual behavior and sexual satisfaction. In both cases, the size of the standardized indirect effect was larger for the models including the two affect regulation motives as mediators, as compared to the models including peer and partner approval motives as mediators. Thus, survivors who endorse affect regulation motives for sex are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior and more likely to report feeling dissatisfied with their sex lives. This suggests that sexual motives may be an important area to target for future sexual health research and intervention programs targeting survivors.

Unacknowledged rape, labeling a rape as a nonvictimizing event, remains largely unstudied among non-college women. This study therefore sought to examine differences in assault characteristics, adjustment, and disclosure by rape acknowledgment status among a sample of lower income rape victims (n = 104) recruited from a reproductive health clinic (mean age = 28.8 years). Although unacknowledged rape was infrequent (17.1% of victims), unacknowledged victims reported that the perpetrator used less force and were less likely to have assertively resisted, as compared to acknowledged victims. There were no significant differences in disclosure, depression, and somatic complaints between unacknowledged and acknowledged rape victims. Implications of the findings for understanding rape acknowledgment and postrape adjustment among community women are discussed.

This paper reviews factors at the individual, microsystem, meso/exosystem, and macrosystem levels that contribute to sexual revictimization among college women. Potential implications for reducing sexual revictimization on campuses via multilevel targeting of interventions is then discussed. This review reveals that despite a need for additional work examining the influence of multiple interacting factors contributing to revictimization, extant work offers insights as to how colleges can develop comprehensive programs to reduce sexual revictimization. Such programming would not only improve institutional responses to sexual violence, but also serve as a model for reducing general cultural acceptance of the perpetration of sexual assault.

The majority of college women who experience rape do not conceptualize their experience as a victimization, that is, they are unacknowledged victims. There is some initial evidence that unacknowledged victims are at elevated re-victimization risk relative to acknowledged victims. In the current study, we sought to identify mediators of the association between acknowledgment of rape and re-victimization in a sample of 319 college rape victims; 187 (58.6%) participants completed a 2-month follow-up study. We examined regular drinking, number of sexual partners, and continuing a relationship with the assailant as potential mediators of the relation between acknowledgment and re-victimization. At follow-up, unacknowledged victims reported higher rates of new attempted (16.2%) and completed rape (11.9%), relative to acknowledged victims (attempted: 7.9%; completed: 3.0%). Number of sexual partners mediated the relation between acknowledgment and attempted rape. Both number of partners and regular drinking mediated the relation between acknowledgment and completed rape. Thus, not acknowledging rape may be associated with re-victimization in part because unacknowledged victims may be more likely to engage in behaviors that increase vulnerability. We believe there is a need for longitudinal, theoretically grounded research examining risky behaviors, victimization, and acknowledgment status over time to delineate the relations among these variables. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ'swebsite at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index