Self-regulation in the path from childhood adversity to problem sexual behaviour

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Meta-analysis shows that 57% of individuals will experience at least one type of adverse experience (e.g., maltreatment or household dysfunction) during childhood, and 13% will experience four or more (Hughes et al., 2017). Experiencing greater adversity in childhood has been associated with a number of problematic outcomes, and is strongly associated with problematic sexual behaviours, including risky sexual behaviour and sexual violence (Hughes et al., 2017; Levenson, Willis, & Prescott, 2014). I propose to look at the possible psychological consequences of adverse experiences and systematically test whether they appear to be causally linked to problematic sexual behaviour. By problematic sexual behaviour I am referring to sexual behaviour that represents a risk of harm to the individual or others, including unsafe sex, harassment, sexual coercion, and other forms of sexual aggression. Specifically, I am interested in looking at psychological constructs relating to self-regulation as mechanisms that may explain how early adversity translates into sexual behaviour problems. Self-regulation refers to the processes (internal and external) that allow the individual to achieve their goals and manage challenges (Ward, Hudson, & Keenan, 1998) and is associated with a variety of problematic sexual behaviours (Crockett, Raffaelli, Shen, 2006; Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2005). Identifying mechanisms of action will present public health professionals with feasible intervention targets. In other words, interventions targeting the self-regulation of individuals may provide a strategy of secondary prevention where primary prevention efforts to reduce adverse childhood experiences have been unsuccessful. The project can be split into four subsections or strands. The first strand will take place during my MSc year and will examine the relationship between my variables of interest using a cross sectional methodology. Based on the existing literature, I am confident of being able to demonstrate the inter-relatedness of these variables. However, my analysis will develop further knowledge on the exact relationships between them. The second strand will use experimental social psychological methods to manipulate the salience of negative childhood experiences to test whether engaging with these negative experiences reduces self-regulation efficacy and increases outcomes on proxies for problematic sexual behaviour. The third strand will move forward a step in examining the casual model by manipulating self-regulation. Using transcranial direct current stimulation, I will attempt to improve self-regulation, and examine the effect on the same proxies for problematic sexual behaviour. In the final, fourth, strand I will build on the findings of strand 1 by following up on the same participants after a period of 30 months. The use of a longitudinal design will strengthen the causal inferences I can make. A subset of the longitudinal study will keep a diary of self-regulation data and sexual behaviour allowing me to examine the temporal proximity of any dysregulation and problematic behaviour. The multi-method approach I propose in this study will allow for greater confidence around the true relationships (and direction of relationships) between these variables. This triangulation should appeal to high quality journals. Not only will this benefit my own development and career, but also it will yield the maximum exposure for this important research. My hope is that the results I obtain will help identify targets for intervention leading to a reduction in problematic sexual behaviour