The present research examined bystander responses to potential party rape scenarios involving either a friend or a stranger at risk. Undergraduate students (N = 151) imagined attending a party and seeing a man lead an intoxicated woman (friend or stranger) into a bedroom. After random assignment to conditions, participants reported on intentions to help, barriers to helping, victim blame, and empathic concern. As expected, based on their shared social group membership, bystanders intended to offer more help to friends than to strangers. Bystanders also reported more personal responsibility to help and more empathic concern when the potential victim was a friend rather than stranger. Observing a friend versus stranger at risk did not affect audience inhibition or perceived victim blame. Compared with women, men reported more blame and less empathic concern for potential victims. However, there were no gender differences in bystander intent to help or barriers to helping. In multivariate analyses, both responsibility to help and empathic concern for the potential victim uniquely predicted bystanders' intent to help a woman at risk for party rape. Results suggest that promoting social identification with peers at risk could increase bystander intervention.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many counselors and therapists to transition from in-person therapy to teletherapy services. Doctoral trainees in their first year of training, faculty, and staff at the Psychological Services Center (PSC), a training clinic at a large public university, successfully completed a rapid transition to teletherapy in March 2020. This brief report will provide insight into steps taken by the PSC to shift to remote training and practice while maintaining its educational and community mandates, prioritizing continuity of care and training during the onset of a global pandemic. We provide the trainee perspective on technological needs, remote supervision, and changes to clinical practice during the transition. Special considerations around self-disclosure and child treatment will be discussed. This brief report serves as an example of the multitude of considerations faculty, staff, and trainees may be faced with as therapeutic services continue remotely throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

College student alcohol use and related consequences continue to warrant significant concern. Extant research demonstrates protective behavioral strategies (PBS; self-regulatory strategies that can be employed before, during, or after drinking to prevent intoxication or negative consequences) have promise for preventative interventions. Variations in conceptualization and measurement of the construct limit generalization of PBS research. To advance generalization of PBS research, there is a need for a brief, comprehensive, content valid, PBS measure that demonstrates equivalence in measurement across demographically diverse college students. The present study aimed to develop a psychometrically robust measure of PBS using item response theory (IRT) to address measurement and methodological issues including identifying optimal response anchors and items that represent the full range of the PBS construct for use with college men and women from different racial backgrounds. Participants were 503 college students enrolled in a midsized university in the Southern United States. IRT and differential item functioning (DIF) analyses of 68 PBS items extracted from 6 existing PBS measures resulted in a 20-item instrument, the Protective Drinking Practices Scale, with items that functioned equivalently for White and Black/African American college men and women. The measure also demonstrated good internal and external validity. Widespread use of this measure will help enhance the comparability of findings in PBS research, allowing for more targeted and impactful research on PBS as a mechanism of change. Suggestions for future research are provided.

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