Self-Protection in the Social Context: A Daily-Level Examination of Young Adult Women’s Perceived Need for and Engagement in Sexual Assault Protective Behavioral Strategies

Objective: Young adult women naturalistically engage in sexual assault protective behavioral strategies (SA-PBS) in an effort to reduce their risk of sexual assault. Despite well-documented sociocontextual risks for sexual assault, it remains largely unknown whether and how social contexts influence SA-PBS use. The present study characterized relations of women’s alcohol use and interpersonal contexts with SA-PBS engagement across social events, framed according to routine activity theory. Method: Young adult women from a community sample (N = 174) reported their drinking and social events across 27 daily assessments spanning 1 year. Multilevel latent class analyses examined variability in SA-PBS, and multinomial regression tested associations of contextual risks with SA-PBS engagement. Results: Results supported three distinct classes of social events characterized by SA-PBS engagement: (a) no or minimal use of SA-PBS (“no use,” 26%), (b) no perceived reason or opportunity to use SA-PBS (“no reason or opportunity,” 44%), and (c) any use of SA-PBS (“any use,” 30%). Presence of likely offenders (odds ratio [OR] = 4.77, p =.004), absence of capable guardianship (OR = 5.91, p <.001), and greater other’s substance intoxication (OR = 1.46, p =.01), as theorized by routine activity theory, increased odds of membership in the “any use” relative to “no use” class. Women’s alcohol consumption was not associated with class membership. Conclusions: Women’s perceptions of risk in the social environment relate to their likelihood of engaging in SA-PBS. Findings represent an important step toward understanding the social context’s role in sexual assault risk and protection.