Computer-assisted self-interviews were completed with a random sample of 163 unmarried Caucasian and African American men in a large metropolitan area. Almost a quarter (24.5%) of these men acknowledged committing an act since the age of 14 that met standard legal definitions of attempted or completed rape; an additional 39% had committed another type of sexual assault involving forced sexual contact or verbal coercion. An expanded version of the Malamuth et al.[1991] confluence model was examined using path analysis. The number of sexual assaults perpetrated by participants was associated with the direct or indirect effects of childhood sexual abuse, adolescent delinquency, alcohol problems, sexual dominance, positive attitudes about casual sexual relationships, and pressure from peers to engage in sexual relationships. Additionally, empathy buffered the relationship between sexual dominance and perpetration. The pattern of results was highly similar for African American and Caucasian men. The implications of these findings for sexual assault measurement are discussed and suggestions are made for alternative treatment programs.

Only a few studies have examined the characteristics of sexual assault based on the tactics used by the perpetrator. In this study we compared the experiences of women who were forced to engage in vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse due to verbal coercion, physical force, or intoxication. Random-digit dialing was used to obtain a sample of 272 single African American and Caucasian women between the ages of 18 and 49 from the Detroit metropolitan area. Participants completed a computer-assisted self-interview that asked detailed questions about a past sexual assault and their reactions to it. Among the 139 women who were forced to engage in vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse, sexual assaults that involved physical force produced the most severe negative outcomes. Situations that involved the woman being too intoxicated to resist differed from others primarily in terms of how much alcohol the man and woman consumed. Although all types of sexual assault were perceived as being at least moderately serious, verbally coerced assaults were on average perceived as being least serious. These findings suggest that the perpetrators' tactics affect women's responses to sexual assault.Legal definitions of sexual assault take into account different strategies that are used by perpetrators to force sex on unwilling victims. Definitions of rape always include physical force or threats of physical force as tactics to obtain sexual intercourse (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1995; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2001). Depending on the jurisdiction, intoxicated victims may also be considered rape victims. Some jurisdictions require that the intoxicant was administered without the victim's knowledge; however, most rape statutes focus on whether the victim was able to consent, with the underlying assumption that an unconscious or severely impaired victim cannot give consent (Gylys & McNamara, 1996; Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Antonia Abbey, Department of Community Medicine, Wayne State University, 4201 St. Antoine, Detroit, MI 48201. aabbey@med.wayne.edu. HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript Kramer, 1994). For the vast majority of victims, alcohol is the cause of this type of impairment, although illicit drugs and/or drugs slipped into the woman's drink (e.g., date rape drugs) are also sometimes the cause of temporary impairment (Bowker, 1978;McGregor, Lipowska, Shah, Du Mont, & De Siato, 2003;Stermac, Du Mont, & Dunn, 1998;Testa & Livingston, 1999). Verbally coercive strategies to obtain sexual intercourse are not usually included in definitions of rape, although they are typically addressed in other sexual assault statutes (Gylys & McNamara, 1996; Michigan Penal Code, 1990).Measures of sexual assault tend to mirror these legal definitions. The Sexual Experiences Survey (SES), which was developed by Koss, Gidycz, and Wisniewski (1987), is the most frequently used measure of sexual assault in academic research. It uses behaviorally specific items that...

Two studies were conducted to investigate the effectiveness of contingency management techniques in promoting punctual counseling attendance among methadone maintenance patients. In Study 1, 50 participants were recruited from an inner-city methadone maintenance program. Study 1 used an A-B-A design with baseline, intervention, and return-to-baseline phases. On-time attendance was reinforced during the intervention phase with a voucher that was redeemable for a draw out of a box containing 100 tokens with values varying from 0.00 dollars to 100.00 dollars. Methadone maintenance patients who exhibited poor attendance during baseline showed a significant positive response during the contingency management intervention phase. Study 2 used the same design as Study 1 except that the 52 participants were randomized into reinforcement groups that received either the variable rate of reinforcement as in Study 1 or a fixed value reinforcer of 3.25 dollars. As in Study 1, Poor Attenders significantly improved counseling attendance during the intervention. There were no differences between the variable and fixed reinforcement groups. Overall, results suggest that targeting Poor Attenders with contingency management techniques may be a cost-effective method of improving counseling attendance. Targeting Poor Attenders early in treatment may be especially important for improving treatment outcomes.

This article summarizes the proceedings of a symposium presented at the 2004 meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism (RSA) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. There were four presentations and a discussant. The symposium was co-chaired by Tina Zawacki and Jeanette Norris. The first presentation was made by Jeanette Norris, who found that alcohol consumption and preexisting alcohol expectancies affected women's hypothetical responses to a vignette depicting acquaintance sexual aggression. The second presentation was made by Joel Martell, who reported that alcohol-induced impairment of executive cognitive functioning mediated the effect of intoxication on men's perceptions of a sexual assault vignette. In the third presentation, Antonia Abbey found that the experiences of women whose sexual assault involved intoxication or force were more negative than were the experiences of women whose sexual assault involved verbal coercion. The fourth presentation was made by Tina Zawacki, who reported that men who perpetrated sexual assault only in adolescence differed from men who continued perpetration into adulthood in terms of their drinking patterns and attitudes toward women. William H. George discussed these findings in terms of their implications for theory development and prevention programming.