Protecting Allies in Risky Situations

The intervention will use Motivational Interviewing's (MI) collaborative conversation style for strengthening commitment to change, to motivate and prepare women to work together to reduce Sexual Assault (SA) risk. This intervention will target ways that the friend dyad may support, encourage, and share responsibility with one another in protecting against SA. The Friend-based MI (FMI) will then use the responsibility and relationship of friends as a framework to foster collaborative efforts to increase readiness and decrease barriers to helping behavior. As part of this, the FMI will focus on the identification and implementation of skills friends can use to help one another prevent sexual assault. FMI will include a focused discussion of the ways drinking may impede helping efforts. Moreover, the FMI will encourage women to identify personal, specific strategies for reducing the effects of alcohol on helping.