Elizabeth A. Yeater

Mindfulness is associated with fewer PTSD symptoms, depressive symptoms, physical symptoms, and alcohol problems in urban firefighters.

OBJECTIVE This study investigated the association between mindfulness, other resilience resources, and several measures of health in 124 urban firefighters. METHOD Participants completed health measures of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depressive symptoms, physical symptoms, and alcohol problems and measures of resilience resources including mindfulness, optimism, personal mastery, and social support. The Mindful Awareness and Attention Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003) was used to assess mindfulness. Participants also completed measures of firefighter stress, number of calls, and years as a firefighter as control variables. Hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted with the health measures as the dependent variables with 3 levels of independent variables: (a) demographic characteristics, (b) firefighter variables, and (c) resilience resources. RESULTS The results showed that mindfulness was associated with fewer PTSD symptoms, depressive symptoms, physical symptoms, and alcohol problems when controlling for the other study variables. Personal mastery and social support were also related to fewer depressive symptoms, firefighter stress was related to more PTSD symptoms and alcohol problems, and years as a firefighter were related to fewer alcohol problems. CONCLUSIONS Mindfulness may be important to consider and include in models of stress, coping, and resilience in firefighters. Future studies should examine the prospective relationship between mindfulness and health in firefighters and others in high-stress occupations.

Cognitive processes underlying women's risk judgments: associations with sexual victimization history and rape myth acceptance.

OBJECTIVE This study evaluated the effects of sexual victimization history, rape myth acceptance, implicit attention, and recent learning on the cognitive processes underlying undergraduate womens explicit risk judgments. METHOD Participants were 194 undergraduate women between 18 and 24 years of age. The sample was ethnically diverse and composed primarily of freshman, heterosexual, and single women. Stimuli were written vignettes describing social situations that varied on dimensions of sexual victimization risk and potential impact on womens popularity. Participants completed cognitive tasks assessing relative attention to victimization risk versus popularity impact, learning about either risk or popularity impact, and explicit classification of victimization risk. Participants then completed the Sexual Experiences Survey (SES) and the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale; SES responses were used to quantify the severity of victimization experiences. RESULTS More severe victimization history predicted use of higher thresholds for judging situations as risky, as well as lower sensitivity to risk and greater sensitivity to popularity impact when judging risk. Greater rape myth acceptance also predicted lower sensitivity to risk information. Higher relative attention to victimization risk predicted greater sensitivity to risk information when judging risk. Recent learning about either the risk or the popularity impact aspects of social situations modified sensitivity to risk versus popularity when making risk judgments. CONCLUSION The study emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the threshold for judging situations as risky from sensitivity to risk-relevant information in understanding individual differences in womens risk judgments. Both processes may be important to consider when developing interventions to reduce womens risk for sexual victimization.

Trauma and Sex Surveys Meet Minimal Risk Standards Implications for Institutional Review Boards

Institutional review boards assume that questionnaires asking about “sensitive” topics (e.g., trauma and sex) pose more risk to respondents than seemingly innocuous measures (e.g., cognitive tests). We tested this assumption by asking 504 undergraduates to answer either surveys on trauma and sex or measures of cognitive ability, such as tests of vocabulary and abstract reasoning. Participants rated their positive and negative emotional reactions and the perceived benefits and mental costs of participating; they also compared their study-related distress with the distress arising from normal life stressors. Participants who completed trauma and sex surveys, relative to participants who completed cognitive measures, rated the study as resulting in higher positive affect and as having greater perceived benefits and fewer mental costs. Although participants who completed trauma and sex surveys reported slightly higher levels of negative emotion than did participants who completed cognitive measures, averages were very low for both groups, and outliers were rare. All participants rated each normal life stressor as more distressing than participating in the study. These results suggest that trauma and sex surveys pose minimal risk.

Sexual Revictimization The Relationship Among Knowledge, Risk Perception, and Ability to Respond to High-Risk Situations

The purpose of this study was to evaluate previously victimized and nonvictimized womens responses to a sexual assault prevention program using a training-to-criterion approach. Responses measured included (a) whether participants already knew the information provided, (b) whether sexually revictimized experimental participants took longer to be trained to criterion than did nonrevictimized experimental participants, and (c) whether sexually revictimized control participants knew less information than did nonrevictimized control participants. Results indicated that sexually revictimized participants did not take longer to be trained to criterion on the program segments and did not know less material on Trial 1 of the prevention program than nonrevictimized participants did. In fact, participants who reported a single victimization experience took significantly longer to be trained to criterion than did revictimized participants on a measure that assessed identification of risky dating behaviors. Implications of these results and suggestions for future research in prevention programming with women are discussed.

The Relationship Between Women’s Response Effectiveness and a History of Sexual Victimization

This study evaluated the effects of a sexual victimization history and the contextual features of sexual activity and alcohol use on the effectiveness of women’s responses to 44 written vignettes describing diverse dating and social situations. One hundred and one undergraduate women reported their history of sexual victimization and provided written descriptions of how they would respond to each vignette. Experts in the sexual violence research area then evaluated the effectiveness of these responses in decreasing risk of having an unwanted sexual experience, meaning one in which the woman is verbally or physically coerced into having sexual contact of any kind with a man. Results revealed that past victimization moderated the influence of the situations’ contextual features on women’s response effectiveness. Specifically, as the presence of sexual activity increased in the situations, the response effectiveness of more severely victimized women increased less than nonvictimized women. In addition, as the presence of alcohol increased in the situations the response effectiveness of more severely victimized women decreased more than that of nonvictimized women.

Factors Affecting Women’s Response Choices to Dating and Social Situations:

This study evaluated the effects of a sexual victimization history, trait disinhibition, alcohol use history, number of lifetime sexual partners, and the contextual features of dating and social events (i.e., sexual activity and alcohol use) on women’s response choices to a set of vignettes describing diverse social situations. A total of 170 undergraduate women chose one of six responses to each situation that varied in their degree of response refusal. Averaged across the situations, more severely victimized women and women reporting higher disinhibition chose responses lower in refusal than nonvictimized women and women reporting lower disinhibition. Past victimization, disinhibition, and number of sexual partners also moderated the influence of the situations’ contextual features on women’s response refusal. Specifically, as the presence of sexual activity increased in the situations, the response refusal of more severely victimized women increased less than nonvictimized women. In addition, as the presence of alcohol increased in the situations, the response refusal of women reporting higher disinhibition and a greater number of sexual partners decreased more than women reporting lower disinhibition and a fewer number of sexual partners.

Predictors of Sexual Aggression Among Male Juvenile Offenders

The purpose of this study was to conduct a longitudinal examination of predictors of sexual aggression among male juvenile offenders. Four hundred and four adolescent males between the ages of 14 and 17 years were recruited from juvenile probation offices to take part in a prospective study of substance use and sexual risk. At baseline, participants completed a series of questionnaires that assessed putative risk factors for sexual aggression. They then completed a measure of sexual aggression at the 6-month follow-up period. Correlational analyses revealed that participants who reported hard drug use, more frequent alcohol and marijuana use, and less severe offenses reported engaging in more severe sexual aggression. In addition, participants who reported higher impulsivity, sensation seeking, and externalizing behaviors also reported participating in more severe sexual aggression. When these variables were included in a regression analysis, only externalizing behaviors and severity of offense uniquely predicted severity of sexual aggression at the 6-month follow-up.

The role of ethnicity, sexual attitudes, and sexual behavior in sexual revictimization during the transition to emerging adulthood

An experience of child sexual abuse (CSA) substantially increases women’s risk of adult sexual assault (ASA), but the mechanisms underlying this relationship are unclear. Previous research often has not examined the full range of ASA experiences or included the influence of ethnicity, sexual behavior, and sexual attitudes on CSA and severity of ASA. The current study utilized path analysis to explore the relationships among ethnicity, sexual attitudes, number of lifetime sexual partners, CSA, and severity of ASA in emerging adult women. Results indicated a significant relationship between CSA and more severe ASA that was partially explained by having more lifetime sexual partners. Additionally, European American women, relative to Hispanic women, reported more severe victimization, which was fully explained by more positive attitudes toward casual sex and having more lifetime sexual partners. These results have implications in the design and implementation of universal and selective prevention programs aimed at reducing ASA and revictimization among emerging adult women.

A Qualitative Analysis of Sexual Victimization Narratives

The current study examined qualitatively 78 sexual victimization narratives to (a) investigate variability within Sexual Experiences Survey (SES) categories to determine whether these events shared contextual features, (b) investigate variability between SES categories to determine whether these events were contextually distinct, and (c) identify emerging contextual features of victimization experiences. Results revealed considerable variation in both within- and between-SES severity categories. Qualitative analysis also identified several emerging contextual features of victimization narratives, such as the after-party situation. Findings suggest that qualitative research may expose contextual variability in sexual victimization experiences not currently captured by quantitative measures of sexual victimization.

Sexual assault prevention with college-aged women: A bibliotherapy approach

The present research evaluated the efficacy of a skills-based bibliotherapy approach to sexual assault prevention for college-aged women. One hundred and ten participants were followed prospectively for 16 weeks. A self-help book, written by the authors, was compared to a wait-list control on several self-report measures. Results revealed significant differences between groups, with bibliotherapy participants reporting decreased participation in risky dating behaviors and improvement in sexual communication strategies across a variety of dating situations. However, results suggested that the self-help book was no more effective than the wait-list control in reducing rates of sexual victimization. Limitations of the study and directions for future sexual assault prevention research with women are discussed.