Increased Risk for Sexual Violence Victimization on Drinking Days Involving Pregaming

ABSTRACT

Alcohol consumption has been associated with increased risk for sexual violence victimization and perpetration. Pregaming, a popular activity among college students that involves heavy and quick drinking prior to going out for the night and often results in high blood alcohol levels (BALs), may convey increased risk for sexual violence – potentially due to greater likelihood of contact with intoxicated perpetrators and significantly impaired victim ability to consent or resist. Yet no published work has evaluated whether there is increased risk for victimization on drinking days that involve pregaming. Using a sample of 390 college student drinkers who completed a past 30-day Timeline Followback, we examined heavy drinking behavior, estimated BALs, and experience of sexual violence victimization during 1,899 drinking days, of which 30% involved pregaming. After controlling for demographics, we found that participants drank approximately two more drinks and reached significantly higher BALs on drinking days where they pregamed as compared to drinking days where they did not pregame. Nearly 6% of drinking days that included pregaming involved sexual violence victimization, compared to about 2% of drinking days where pregaming did not occur. Participants were at 2.71 times the odds of experiencing sexual violence, primarily unwelcomed comments and nonconsensual sexual touching, during drinking days with pregaming. This study represents a first step toward greater understanding of the sexual violence and pregaming link, but future research assessing perpetrator behavior and context-specific factors (e.g., amount consumed by victims and perpetrators, location of sexual violent events and peers present) are needed.

KEYWORDS:

• heavy drinking
• sexual violence
• pregaming
• college
• young adult

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) (R34AA025968 “Mobile Application Intervention Targeting the High Risk Drinking Practice of Prepartying”) awarded to Eric R. Pedersen. Manuscript preparation for this article was also supported by NIAAA Grant R00AA026317 (PI: Dworkin). The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions or policies of the authors’ institutions or the NIAAA.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) (R34AA025968 “Mobile Application Intervention Targeting the High Risk Drinking Practice of Prepartying”) ;awarded to Eric R. Pedersen.