Binge drinking and sexual assault among college students at a minority institution

Alcohol-related sexual assault on college campuses is a significant public health problem. Despite increased prevention efforts over the last two decades, rates of college binge drinking have changed little. The Core survey has been used at over 1000 colleges and universities to monitor the effectiveness of substance use prevention programs on college campuses. In order to better understand the increasing incidence of reported sexual assault among students at a large public minority institution, we added to the 2008 Core survey standard items about the full range of forced sexual acts including forced touching or kissing; verbally coerced intercourse; and physically forced vaginal, oral and anal penetration. Analyses examined the relationship of alcohol use and sexual assault among 2204 students. Findings show that, even after controlling for age and gender (both significant predictors of reported sexual assault), binge drinking (defined as 5 or more drinks for men and 4 drinks or more for women one or more times in 2 weeks) increased the odds of reporting at least one experience of sexual assault by 63%. Analyses by gender show that binge drinking increased the odds of reporting at least one experience of sexual assault by 62% for males and 92% for females. Findings also show that 23% (n=529) of respondents reported having been able to prevent an occurrence of sexual assault. Implications of these and other findings for future research and prevention efforts will be discussed.