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ODU using $911K in federal funding to study alcohol use by lesbian, bisexual women

ODU using $911K in federal funding to study alcohol use by lesbian, bisexual women

 

ABC 13 News Now

By the Staff, WVEC

August 31, 2016

NORFOLK, Va. (WVEC) — Old Dominion University is using $911,056 in federal funding to study alcohol use by lesbian and bisexual women.

 

Psychology professor Robin Lewis submitted the project proposal to the National Institutes for Health (NIH).

 

Lewis proposed the initial leg of the study in 2012, when the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism provided the effort with $446,056.

 

That foundational work was entitled Minority Stress, Alcohol Use, and Intimate Partner Violence Among Lesbians.

 

More recently, Lewis submitted Alcohol Use, Relationship Factors, Minority Stress, and Psychological Well-being: A Daily Process Examination Among Young Adult Females.

 

In that proposal, she explained: “Sexual minority women (i.e., women who self-identify as lesbian and bisexual) report more heavy drinking, more alcohol-related problems, and higher rates of alcohol use disorders as compared to heterosexual women. Young sexual minority women are particularly vulnerable. Despite this awareness, no studies have examined how relationship factors and partners’ alcohol use contribute to hazardous drinking among female sexual minority couples.”

 

The study, in part, will look at stress as a contributing factor in alcohol use/abuse:

 

“By employing a daily diary approach it will be possible to examine dynamic daily relationships among alcohol use, relationship experiences, sexual minority stressors, and affect, as well as person-level factors (e.g., baseline characteristics such as legally recognized relationship status, positive sexual identity, and connection to the LGBT community) that may serve as protective factors, and potentially attenuate the association between stressors and hazardous alcohol use. We propose to collect data from both partners in 150 female same-sex couples recruited from an online panel. Participants will individually complete baseline measures of alcohol use, lifetime discrimination, sexual minority identity, relationship status, an connection to the LGBT community followed by 14 days of online daily diary surveys of relationship experiences, stressors, negative affect, and alcohol use.”

 

The proposal, which received approval earlier this month, will provide $465,000 for the study.

 

The money will come from the Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health and from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

 

Combined with the funding for the original portion of the research, that brings the amount of federal money allocated to the ODU study to $911,056.