Honors College Thesis
 

Associations between state alcohol tax policies and college sexual assault offenses

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/honors_college_theses/vx021p67p

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  • Previous literature consistently demonstrates a link between binge drinking and sexual assault among college students. State alcohol control policies, particularly tax policies, are established as important predictors of college binge drinking but have not been examined in relation to sexual assault. This study used merged data on student demographics and college characteristics (n = 1290) from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), college sexual assault offense data recorded with the Office of Postsecondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education Campus Safety and Security Statistics (CSS), young adult binge drinking rates using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and state alcohol policy scores using the Alcohol Policy Scale (APS). First, I expect state alcohol tax policies to predict population-level binge drinking, after controlling for non-tax policies. Second, I hypothesize that state alcohol tax policies will be more predictive of college sexual assault offenses than non-tax policies. Correlations and linear regression analyses were run to test my hypotheses. Results indicated that higher (more robust) state alcohol tax policy scores were significantly correlated with the number of rape (r = -0.178, p <0.001) and fondling (r = -0.173, p <0.001) offenses on campuses per 10,000 students. In contrast, non-tax policies were not significantly associated with either sexual assault outcome. In the linear regression analyses, after adjusting for multiple institutional covariates and non-tax alcohol policies, state alcohol tax policies remained a significant predictor of both fondling (ꞵ = -0.112, p < 0.001 ) and rape (ꞵ = -0.106, p < 0.001 ) offenses, supporting my primary hypothesis. Contrary to my hypothesis, there was not a significant association between state tax policies and population-level binge drinking. These findings imply that more robust state alcohol tax policies may be protective against college sexual assault offenses. Future research into preventative measures for college sexual assault should use these findings as a guide.
  • Keywords: sexual assault, binge drinking, state alcohol tax policies
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