Alcohol's Role in How Bystanders Approach Campus Sexual Assault: A Systematic Review

Background/Purpose: Alcohol is involved in 50-70% of campus sexual assaults. Increasingly, college campuses are using bystander education programs to address campus sexual assault, including in party contexts. Curiously however, few bystander training programs address the role that alcohol may play in a bystander’s decision to intervene. Bystanders’ behavior may be impacted by the victim’s alcohol use, the perpetrator’s alcohol use, or their own alcohol use. We refer to this three-party system for organizing our understanding of alcohol’s role in bystander behavior as the Bystander Action & Response Tripartite Alcohol-Behavior (or BARTAB) model. While campuses are urged to address alcohol’s role in sexual assault, there is limited guidance as to how to do so concerning bystander intervention programs. Therefore, this systematic review critically evaluates the outcomes and methodology of research pertaining specifically to alcohol’s role in how bystanders’ approach campus sexual assault.

Methods: This review was developed using PRISMA-P protocols and was registered with PROSPERO (#2017059761). Using four search strategies and rigorous systematic review methods (e.g., database searches, hand searching, reference harvesting, and forward citation chaining), we conducted a review of empirical peer-reviewed articles published after 2000 that discussed, at least in part, how alcohol consumption by victims, perpetrators, and bystanders impact bystander behavior during incidents of potential sexual assault. We excluded articles that (a) were published before 2000, (b) were written in a language other than English, (c) were not original research, (d) were conducted outside the U.S., its territories, and Canada, (e) were not conducted with college students, (f) only focused on child sexual abuse, (g) did not include bystander-related outcomes, or (h) did not contain information related to alcohol’s impact on how bystanders approach sexual assault.

Results: Twenty-four articles met the inclusion criteria. Seventeen used quantitative methodology and seven used qualitative methodology. The articles varied widely in sample size, sampling strategy, sample characteristics, instruments used, and study design. There is currently limited information on alcohol's role in how bystanders approach campus sexual assault. Most studies focus on the influence of victim, rather than perpetrator or bystander, drinking on bystander behavior. There is no consensus as to how to measure the role of alcohol in how bystanders approach campus sexual assault. Findings are mixed on how alcohol use impacts bystanders’ attributions of blame.

Conclusion and Implications: The BARTAB model can be a valuable framework through which to examine current and future research in this area. Recommendations for practice, policy, and research are provided based on study findings. This review’s examination of methodology, measurement, and current mixed findings illuminates key gaps in the current literature and opportunities for future research needed to fully understand the role alcohol research can play in campus sexual assault prevention. Interventions should be developed and tested to effectively shift social norms, and campus sexual assault prevention efforts should address all components of the BARTAB model. More diverse samples are needed to examine the intersections of sexual assault and drinking scenarios with marginalization based on social identities (e.g., race, class, sexual orientation).