Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: Sexual victimization is among the most prevalent and psychologically injurious experiences affecting the development of girls and young women. This report derives from a research program charting the developmental effects of violence exposure, the relationships of this exposure with other related risks such as substance use, and identification of factors that mediate these influences on coping in the context of violence exposure as well as subsequent revictimization. Such findings are fundamental to the development of interventions to buffer the effects of these antecedent factors and to foster self-protective coping. The present study extends appraisal-based analyses of coping in the immediate context of violence (Nurius, et al, 2004). Specifically, we examined antecedent risk factors that have been established as being both correspondent with elevated victimization risk and theorized to influence situational stress responding in the face of sexual assault. The utility of these factors to explain situational coping appraisals and further victimization was tested uniquely and in combination with exposure characteristics, including substance use.

Methods: This NIMH-funded study is a cross-sectional survey of 415 women who met criteria specifying acquaintance sexual victimization after age 16 but within the last five years recruited from urban college settings through announcements and letters of invitation. Participants' mean age was 21.7 years; 27% were ethnic minority; and SES was fairly normally distributed. Measures were derived from Lazarus' stress research, were previously used, and have satisfactory psychometric properties. Referencing a specific victimization experience, cognitive appraisals (accountability, efficacy potential, outcome concerns about resistance) and emotional states were assessed as were victimization histories, situational substance use, characteristics of the victimization, and sexual victimization subsequent to the index event.

Results: To test explanatory utility, cognitive appraisals, emotions, and subsequent victimization were independently regressed onto 1) prior victimization, 2) victim substance use, and 3) characteristics of the index assault experience. Hierarchical regression of these blocks allowed for testing of unique and cumulative explanation of variance. Final regression solutions achieved significance at p<.001 level for each dependent variable except perpetrator accountability appraisals. Each predictor set provided significantly additive R2 change in expected directions. Specifically, singly and in combination, these antecedent and situational risk factors were significantly associated with impaired cognitive-affective processing of the assault experience at the time as well as higher levels of subsequent sexual victimization.

Conclusions: The effectiveness of prevention programming in the arena of sexual victimization has been limited, particularly for those with prior victimization histories (Söchting, et al., 2004). These findings suggest that, in addition to knowledge and resistance skill-building, interventions need to target antecedent and situational risk factors likely to significantly influence situational interpretation and behavioral responding in the context of assault threat. We outline how appraisal-based coping provides conceptual scaffolding for prevention modeling and the implications of these findings for linking prior, current, and future victimization risk self-protective coping response patterns. Victimization histories in particular may predispose women to situational appraisals and emotional states that require emotion regulation and situation analysis preparation to manage coping responses in the direction of self-protection.