This study evaluated the effects of sexual victimization history, alcohol-related problems, psychological distress, and disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies on the effectiveness of women’s response performance in hypothetical social situations depicting risk for sexual victimization. Two hundred and forty-five undergraduate women first listened to audiotaped descriptions of the hypothetical social situations and imagined that they were the woman depicted in each scenario. They then were given a response to each situation deemed in prior work by experts in the sexual victimization research area to be effective at reducing risk for sexual victimization and asked to provide each response verbally while being videotaped. Participants then completed measures assessing prior victimization history, alcohol-related problems, psychological distress, and disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies. Experts in the sexual violence research area rated participants’ responses with respect to how effective each response was in decreasing their risk for having an unwanted sexual experience, defined as an experience in which the woman may be verbally or physically coerced into having a sexual contact of any kind with a man. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies were associated positively with women’s response performance, indicating that women who endorsed greater disinhibited sex-related alcohol expectancies provided more effective responses to risky hypothetical situations. Findings suggest possible interventions aimed at reducing women’s risk of sexual victimization.
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