UB researchers receive grant to test innovative sexual assault prevention measure

Two UB researchers have received a $3.019 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, to clinically test a novel intervention designed to reduce alcohol-involved sexual assault (AISA) risk for college women.

Approximately 20% of U.S. college women are sexually assaulted. Nearly half of those assaults involve alcohol, according to research published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Because AISA often occurs in social settings, bystander interventions, which prepare people who are in those settings to safely intervene to prevent such assaults, have been developed as a prevention strategy.

Jennifer Read, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences, and Jennifer Livingston, associate professor in the School of Nursing, have received funding to test such a bystander intervention —  one that differs from existing approaches, both in how it’s administered and who it involves.

Traditional bystander intervention programs are delivered to a group of individuals, teaching skills to intervene to prevent assault. But the focus of this grant, the friend-based motivational interview (FMI), is delivered to pairs of friends who socialize together.  

It takes into consideration the effects drinking may have on an individual’s ability to recognize and respond to risk. This is especially important in social contexts like bars or parties, where it might not be clear whether bystander action is wanted.

“Friends are in a much better position than a stranger to make this determination,” says Livington.

The FMI encourages and prepares friends to work together to reduce AISA risk. Through guided conversation with interventionists, the FMI capitalizes on the natural strengths of the friendship between two people who often socialize together.

The goal is to have friends think about what prevention skills will work in their lives and how to supportively apply that learning to identify risk and take steps to prevent it. Because friends have a greater sense of personal responsibility to one another, they are more likely to take these steps to keep one another safe.

“What makes this project innovative is the idea that the friends are working out sexual assault prevention skills together, in ways that work in their social lives,” says Read. “Sexual assault is never the woman’s fault. However, we know from extensive research that there are things women can do that will help protect them from such assaults. We also know that there are many things that women already do naturalistically to protect themselves. This intervention is designed to build on what women already are doing.

“Testing this FMI is about empowering women, not blaming them.”

The FMI was developed and previously tested in a NIAAA-funded developmental project conducted by this same team. That pilot study involved 25 pairs of friends.

“We wanted to know in that initial study how each person in the dyad changed,” says Read. “And we saw positive outcomes with women reporting fewer assaults at the three-month follow-up.”

Data from the phase one study offered support for the effect of the FMI on readiness to intervene. Results further suggested it helped decrease barriers to helping behavior and increased friend-based assault protective behavioral skills. Findings from the pilot study also showed that women liked the intervention and appreciated that it worked within the contexts of their lives.

“We didn’t come up with these skills; we listened to what women were doing already,” says Read. “Plan, stick with friends, share contact information over the evening and monitor drinks. These are the kinds of things that emerged from our previous interviews.”

The newly funded project is a phase two trial that will involve more than 200 pairs of women. It will examine the efficacy of the FMI compared to a standard AISA intervention, following up with participants for a year.

“In phase two, we’re interested in the process of the dyad and how much the participants are changing independent of one another and how much they’re changing together,” says Read. “We want to find out if the intervention changes their relationship.”

Although designed for friends who socialize together, the FMI’s effectiveness does not require those friends to be together.

“There are many ways that friends can encourage one another in their protective efforts without actually being out together,” says Read.

The researchers are also expecting the FMI to self-perpetuate. If two people are taking protective steps, then others in a friend group might be likely to do so as well.

“The FMI is not a one-off just between these two people. It can self-perpetuate to others in these social settings,” says Livingston.