College sexual assault: a call for trauma-informed prevention.

A national conversation has emerged regarding the prevalence of and strategies for addressing sexual assault on college campuses. Sexual assault includes rape, sexual coercion, being forced to penetrate someone else, and unwanted sexual experiences including those without physical contact [1]. We are now familiar with the statistic that one in five women will experience sexual assault in college. These frequently cited findings emerged from a study of more than 5,000 college women from two universities in the Southern and Midwestern United States [2] with similar findings shown in a recent study that assessed sexual victimization during the school year among more than 4,000 college women from eight campuses in the Northeast [3]. Although the prevalence of sexual assault victimization among men in college is poorly understood and likely underestimated, the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey indicates that approximately one in 71 men will experience sexual assault in their lifetime [1]. Most sexual assault survivors (80%) experience their first assault before the age of 24 years, making college campuses a particularly important venue for prevention [1,4]. In this issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health, Carey et al. [5] present findings from a longitudinal study of 483 first-year female students attending a college in Northeastern United States. The study surveyed women when they arrived on campus, after fall semester, after spring semester, and at the end of the summer before sophomore year to assess the incidence of rape in their first year of college. This study, with its use of multiple measurements over time, bolsters findings from previous studies which suggest that rape is a common experience among collegeaged women. Between 8% and 11% of women experienced rape in each semester during their first year in college, which is hypothesized to be a time of increased vulnerability to sexual violence [2,6]. This study also makes the distinction between incapacitated rape and forced rape, with incapacitated rape (defined by the study authors as rape involving drugs or alcohol) more commonly experienced during the study. Experts emphasize that alcohol