Thursday, May 9, 2024
5/9/2024
Summary: Sexual and gender minority (e.g. lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer; SGM) emerging adults (18-25 years) experience sexual violence (SV) at a rate nearly double that of their heterosexual, cisgender peers. After experiencing SV, most college students disclose this experience to a peer in search of support, and 83% of SGM survivors disclose this experience to a peer who is SGM. Peers often provide negative social reactions to disclosures of SV, which lead to negative outcomes for all emerging adults; SGM individuals face additional negativity due to minority stress, leading to increased levels of hazardous drinking as well as negative mental health outcomes. Interventions need to be developed and tested to improve the social reactions provided by SGM friends of SGM SV survivors. One such program, SSS, has demonstrated modest reductions in negative social reactions among program participants. SSS is a 2-hour in-person interactive workshop followed by a 90 minute booster, delivered in groups and co-facilitated, but needs to be tailored to improve social reactions provided to SGM survivors by SGM peers. Specific Aim 1: Tailor an intervention (SSS+) to improve social reactions provided by SGM emerging adults who receive disclosures of SV experienced among their SGM peers. We will conduct theater testing (N=30) with SGM emerging adults in the Charlotte, NC area. Theater testing is a methodology for pre-testing interventions or products with groups of people. We will show participants a video recorded demonstration of SSS and a brief summary of the booster. The video will be stopped periodically for feedback on SGM-specific adaptations. Using theater testing data, input from an advisory board of 10 SGM, mental health, and SV experts, and PI and Co-I expertise, we will systematically reconstruct the SSS program to become SSS+. Specific Aim 2: Determine the feasibility and acceptability of SSS+. We will include a stratified sample of n=20 SGM emerging adults to participate in the tailored in-person skills training. The intervention will be evaluated for its acceptability (i.e., qualitative feedback and general satisfaction scores). Initial feasibility will be determined by attendance and participant engagement and fidelity checks. Specific Aim 3: Assess SSS+ effects on intentions to provide better general and alcohol-specific social reactions using pilot RCT design. We will recruit n=178 SGM emerging adults to the study and randomly assign them (1:1 allocation ratio) to receive the intervention (n=89) or receive an attention control (n=89). A pre-post design will be used to assess the intervention’s association with intentions to provide positive and negative social reactions using a modified version of the Social Reactions Questionnaire and Social Reactions Questionnaire-Alcohol. Completion of this study will result in an SGM-focused intervention to improve social reactions provided upon disclosure of SV among SGM emerging adults, which may lead to reductions in problematic drinking and other deleterious outcomes for this vulnerable group.
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