Dr.
Jessica A.
Blayney

Inspired by my mother’s work in natural disaster preparedness and response, I structured my undergraduate research experiences to learn more about trauma. After graduation, I worked at the Center for the Study of Health and Risk Behaviors where my research interests focused on sexual victimization, distress, and alcohol use. To deepen my understanding of these topics, I collaborated on publications examining alcohol and sexual risk behaviors, the college drinking environment, and trauma recovery. These experiences allowed me to refine my research interests, and as I prepared for graduate school, I looked for programs where I could develop as an alcohol and sexual victimization researcher.

College students who have experienced sexual victimization report heavier and more frequent drinking. My early graduate research examined the longer term impact of sexual victimization as students began to transition out of college (Blayney, Colder, & Read, 2016; Blayney, Scalco, Radomski, Colder, & Read, 2019). Most young adults show a pattern of gradual decline in alcohol use during this transition, yet it was unclear if students who experienced sexual victimization would too. Findings revealed that alcohol use and consequences did decrease for students with sexual victimization histories, but those who reported revictimization remained at higher risk.

My early research also explored how aspects of the sexual victimization incident itself influence post-victimization recovery (Blayney & Read, 2018; Blayney, Hequembourg, & Livingston, 2021). Findings revealed that trauma severity impacts how a person makes sense of the experience and is linked to greater distress and alcohol use over time. Socio-environmental context (e.g., intoxication, relationship with the perpetrator) also influence distress – both immediately following and years later.

My later graduate research explored how social contexts influence sexual victimization risk (Blayney, Jaffe, Carroll, & Read, 2021). This included understanding college women’s perceptions of risk in social contexts and the role that friend groups play responding to risk (Blayney, Jenzer, Read, Livingston, & Testa, 2018).

College women rely on friends when navigating social contexts by using a number of friends-based protective strategies, including keeping tabs on each other, using signals to convey potential danger, taking responsibility for friends, interrupting escalating situations, and drawing on male friends to reduce risk (Blayney, Jenzer, Read, Livingston, Testa, & Carroll, 2020). Friends-based strategies are often used in response to lower severity incidents like unwanted sexual attention or sexual touching (Blayney, Jenzer, Jaffe, Carroll, & Read, 2022).

These strategies, however, are not without barriers, as college women indicate that intoxication, preoccupation, situation ambiguity, and social consequences can easily derail strategy use within friend groups (Blayney, Jenzer, Read, Livingston, Testa & Carroll, 2021).

My current work involves translating basic social science research into theory-informed technology-based interventions for adolescents and young women. These interventions are sex positive and focus on information, motivation building, and skills training to empower young women to take charge of their sexual health.

Within my studies, I take a mixed methods approach to learn more about the experiences of the women I work with. These young women also have the opportunity to provide feedback on the content, design, and delivery of the interventions being developed. Following development, the interventions will be pilot tested for feasibility and acceptability before moving on to large scale randomized controlled trials.

As part of these studies, I draw on user centered design, an innovative approach from the technology sector, which incorporates the target population into all stages of intervention development. Without user involvement, we run the risk of developing interventions that won’t be used. To learn more about user centered design, check out my UX design page.