Objective: Using substances before sex may affect sexual decision-making among young women and increase their risk for a variety of negative consequences, including sexual victimization, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies. A brief, web-based intervention combining alcohol reduction strategies with emotion regulation skills demonstrated initial efficacy at reducing heavy drinking and improving emotion regulation abilities among college women with sexual victimization histories. The present study represents a secondary analysis of this intervention to evaluate its preliminary efficacy in reducing sexual risk behaviors, specifically alcohol and other drug use before sex.
Method: The sample comprised 200 heavy-drinking college women with histories of sexual victimization randomized to an assessment-only control or the intervention consisting of 14 brief online alcohol reduction and emotion regulation skill-building modules administered daily over a 2-week period. The analytic sample included 173 women who reported their substance use before sex at baseline and at least one of two (1-month and/or 6-month) follow-up surveys.
Results: Repeated-measures mixed models revealed significant time-by-intervention interaction effects on alcohol use. Women who received the intervention had a significant decrease in alcohol use before sex from baseline to 1-month follow-up. Although levels of alcohol use before sex continued to be lower at the 6-month follow-up relative to baseline, differences did not reach statistical significance. Time-by-intervention interaction effects on drug use before sex were not statistically significant.
Conclusions: Skills to reduce alcohol use and improve emotion regulation skills may be beneficial in helping women make adaptive decisions surrounding their sexual well-being.