Alcohol Increasingly Has Become a Contributing Factor in Campus Sexual Assaults

A new study led by Mary Koss, a Regents’ Professor in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona, finds that alcohol has increasingly become a contributing factor in the incidence of rape on college campuses.

The study found that one of every three women students on college campuses had been victims of some sort of sexual assault while in college or in high school. Thirty years before, a similar survey led by Dr. Koss found that one in four women students on college campuses were sexual assault victims. In the 1980s study, one of every 19 men admitted that they had been the perpetrator of a sexual assault. In the most recent survey, the figure was one in eight.

Furthermore, the research shows that 30 years ago, 50 percent of women who were assaulted were inebriated at the time of the assault. In the most recent stuy, 75 percent of the women college students said they were inebriated. In the 1980s and now, nine of 10 men who admitted to sexual assault, said they took advantage of women who were under the influence of alcohol.

Professor Koss is a graduate of the University of Michigan, where she majored in psychology. She holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota.

The full study, “The Scope of Rape Victimization and Perpetration Among National Samples of College Students Across 30 Years,” was published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. It may be accessed here.