Objectives: Addresses the role that psychological distress (i.e. depression and anxiety) plays in mediating the relationship between workplace harassment (i.e. sexual and generalized workplace harassment) and increased alcohol problems among employed college students. Participants: Two waves of data were collected from 905 study participants…

Student victimization by school staff members has important potential consequences for students' academic achievement and physical and psychological outcomes. Several studies have shown that such victimization exists in multiple contexts and there is considerable variation in prevalence among contexts. This study examined the prevalence of student…

Objective: To determine the direct and indirect effects of sexual assault on sleep health in varsity athletes. Participants: Varsity athletes (n = 2,910) who completed the Fall 2019 or 2020 administrations of the American College Health Association's National College Health Assessment III. Methods: We combined exploratory factor analysis and…

Objective: This study assessed whether college women who bring their own alcohol to parties (BYOB) are less vulnerable to sexual victimization (SV). Participants: Participants were 652 female freshmen (M age = 18.04 years) at a large, public university. Methods: Women were recruited by email to complete online surveys of their drinking-related…

Objective: To examine whether sexual assault prospectively predicts unhealthy weight management behaviors in college women. Method: Participants were female college students (N = 483) with monthly assessments across the first year, including the frequency and severity of sexual assault and unhealthy weight management behaviors. Results: Frequency…

Campus sexual assault (CSA) is a pervasive problem among US college students. Large scale, methodologically similar studies frequently find that between 20-25% of women and 6-7% of men are sexually victimized during their time at 4 year colleges and universities in the US (Cantor et al., 2015, 2019; Fisher, Cullen, & Turner, 2000; Krebs et…

The rise in highly publicized cases of sexual assault, along with offenders in these cases alluding that those alleged victims were being untruthful about their claims, has fostered myths about false reporting of sexual assault, increasing discussions over fears of being falsely accused. This study uses an exploratory approach to identify the…

Background: Depression continues to be a public health crisis for young adults. For high school students, past research has identified trauma as a significant predictor of depression. Congruent with the theory of cumulative stress, the present study hypothesized that the effect of sexual assault on depression would be stronger among lesbian, gay,…

Objective: This study aims to examine factors related to emotional abuse, an understudied type of intimate partner violence (IPV), among a sample of college students. Participants: 601 undergraduates from one large public university in the Midwestern United States (Spring 2017) and 756 undergraduates from one large public university in the…

Nonconsensual sexual activity remains a prominent and troubling aspect of undergraduate student life at U.S. colleges and universities. Past research revealed that 23.6% of female undergraduate students, and 5.8% of male undergrads, had experienced nonconsensual sexual contact. Given the scope of the problem, identifying groups of students…

Problem: Risky sexual behaviors are common among college undergraduate students, and previous experience of interpersonal potentially traumatic events further increase the risk to engage in these behaviors. Little is known about how physical activity level and organized sports participation moderate the relationship between interpersonal…

Researchers have accumulated much social scientific knowledge about the scope, distribution, causes, and outcomes of the physical and sexual abuse of female students in North American institutions of higher learning. However, surveys of technology-facilitated stalking and the dissemination of unwanted sexual messages/images in college campus…

Objective: To investigate the predictive role of victimization in suicidality among college women. Participants: Female respondents to the American College Health Association National College Health Assessment II (N = 258). Methods: Multivariate logistic regression analyses examined the relationship between victimization and suicidality. Results:…

Sexual assault is a major public health concern and college women are four times more likely to experience sexual assault than any other group. We investigated whether sexting is a mechanism by which alcohol use increases risk for college women to be targeted for sexual assault. We hypothesized that sexting would mediate the relationship between…

Given high rates of relationship violence among adolescents, there is a need to understand variables that influence adolescents' helping behaviors to reduce risk for dating and sexual violence (reactive) and promote prevention before violence happens or risk factors are evident (proactive). The current paper examined individual and school…