Trajectories and predictors of sexually aggressive behaviors during emerging adulthood.

OBJECTIVE: To assess longitudinal trajectories of college males' sexually aggressive behaviors and determine time-varying individual- and peer-level risk factors that differentiate men who follow these different paths. METHOD: Our analytic sample consisted of 795 men who participated in a longitudinal study on high-risk behaviors among college students. The sample was surveyed at the end of each of their four years at university on a variety of measures, including sexual aggression (SA) and its hypothesized risk factors (hostile masculinity, number of sexual partners, alcohol misuse, and peer norms). RESULTS: Using latent growth mixture modeling, we found four distinct SA trajectories - (1) consistently high, (2) decreasing, (3) increasing, and (4) consistently low. Multinomial logistic regression revealed that hostile masculinity and peer norms positively predicted trajectory membership at times when each trajectory reflected a high level of SA. CONCLUSIONS: focus on these risk factors throughout the college years, perhaps through annual self-assessments.