REGULAR ARTICLE Changes in adolescents ’ risk factors following peer sexual coercion: Evidence for a feedback loop

Investigators have identified a number of factors that increase the risk for experiencing sexual coercion, but as yet little is known about how sexual coercion in turn affects these risk factors. Using a sample of 110 adolescents, the current study examined the hypothesis that, after an incident of sexual coercion, adolescents would exhibit increases in several behaviors known to increase risk for victimization. As predicted, after experiencing sexual coercion, adolescents reported increased externalizing symptoms, more frequent sexual intercourse and a greater total number of intercourse partners. Finally, alcohol use, drug use, and problems related to substance use increased. These findings suggest the presence of a feedback loop, in which the experience of sexual coercion leads to an intensification of the factors that initially contributed risk for coercion. Adolescence is an age of exploration, during which most teens begin dating and exploring their sexuality. For too many adolescents, however, early romantic experiences in-volve sexual coercion. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey re-cently revealed that 7.4 % of adolescents report being forced to have sexual intercourse (Eaton et al., 2010). When the def-inition of sexual coercion is expanded to include unwanted sexual contact due to verbal pressure, alcohol or drugs, o