Students who receive sexuality education,
including refusal skills training, before college matriculation are at
lower risk of experiencing sexual assault during college, according to
new research published today in PLOS ONE. The latest
publication from Columbia University's Sexual Health Initiative to
Foster Transformation (SHIFT) project suggests that sexuality education
during high school may have a lasting and protective effect for
adolescents.
The research found that students who received formal education about
how to say no to sex (refusal skills training) before age 18 were less
likely to experience penetrative sexual assault in college.
Students who
received refusal skills training also received other forms of sexual
education, including instruction about methods of birth control and
prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. Students who received
abstinence-only instruction did not show significantly reduced
experiences of campus sexual assault.
"We need to start sexuality education earlier," said John Santelli,
MD, the article's lead author, a pediatrician and professor of
Population and Family Health at Columbia University Mailman School of
Public Health. "It's time for a life-course approach to sexual assault
prevention, which means teaching young people - before they get to
college - about healthy and unhealthy sexual relationships, how to say
no to unwanted sex, and how to say yes to wanted sexual relationships."
The findings draw on a confidential survey of 1671 students from
Columbia University and Barnard College conducted in the spring of 2016
and on in-depth interviews with 151 undergraduate students conducted
from September 2015 to January 2017.
The authors found that multiple social and personal factors
experienced prior to college were associated with students' experience
of penetrative sexual assault (vaginal, oral, or anal) during college.
These factors include unwanted sexual contact before college (for
women); adverse child experiences such as physical abuse; 'hooking up'
in high school; or initiation of sex and alcohol or drug use before age
18.
Ethnographic interviews highlighted the heterogeneity of students'
sex education experiences. Many described sexuality education that was
awkward, incomplete, or provided little information about sexual consent
or sexual assault.
The research also found that students who were born outside of the
United States and students whose mothers had lived only part of their
lives or never lived in the U.S. had fewer experiences of penetrative
sexual assault in college. Religious participation in high school did
not prevent sexual assault overall, but a higher frequency of religious
participation showed a borderline statistically significant protective
association.
"The protective impact of refusal skills-based sexuality education,
along with previous research showing that a substantial proportion of
students have experienced assault before entering college, underlines
the importance of complementing campus-based prevention efforts with
earlier refusal skills training," said Santelli.
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