NCJ Number
178713
Journal
Psychology of Women Quarterly Volume: 21 Issue: 4 Dated: December 1997 Pages: 509-526
Date Published
1997
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study provides a preliminary description of the types of violence experienced by women bar drinkers and the roles of exposure and impairment as risk factors for encountering bar- related aggression.
Abstract
Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from 52 women bar drinkers through self-administered questionnaires and focus group discussions about their lifestyles, alcohol and drug use, and patterns of bar drinking. Nearly half of the women (48.1 percent) had experienced physical violence (e.g., assault), and one-third (32.6 percent) had experienced either attempted or completed rape associated with drinking in a bar. These findings, although preliminary, provide some evidence that frequenting bars in lower income, higher crime urban areas, along with more frequent bar drinking in general, may increase a woman's risk for experiencing bar-related victimization. Still, interpretation of these results should be cautious. This was a small, volunteer sample of women bar drinkers, the majority of whom were recruited through newspaper advertisements. Thus, these women may not be representative of women bar drinkers in general. Further, at this time there are no data on the general population of women bar drinkers to which these findings can be compared. Thus, generalizing to all women bar drinkers would be inappropriate. Also, the sample size was not sufficient to detect smaller sized, but nonetheless potentially important relationships. 2 tables, 4 notes, and 55 references