Feds to spend nearly $50K to study college sexting

Want to know if college girls who participate in sexting will engage in risky sexual behavior? It will only cost $42,676.

According to The Washington Free Beacon, a federal study to determine whether or not sexting will increase college girls’ risky sexual behavior will cost taxpayers just that much

The study will follow college girls for two semesters and examine male and female students’ interpretations of sexting encounters. The study is based on self-reported data, diary entries, and reviews of the participating students’ text messages.

“This project will address how sexting (the exchange of sexually suggestive texts or pictures via mobile phone) and problematic alcohol use together increase the risk for [risky sexual behavior and sexual] assault among college women,” a grant issued last year by the department of Health and Human Services read.

The grant has three hypotheses: “Sexting mediates the relationship between alcohol use and [both risky sexual behavior and] sexual assault among college women,” “[i]mpulsivity-related traits and sex-related alcohol expectancies prospectively predict alcohol use, and subsequent sexting, [risky sexual behavior, and sexual] assault among college women,” and “[m]ales and females differentially interpret implicit messages in sexting and alcohol use behaviors, leading to increased risk for sexual assault.”

“This study is not beneficial and a waste of taxpayer dollars,” Hannah Tabrizi a junior at Valdosta State University told Campus Reform. “How about a study on rape prevention or rape culture?”

Allyson L. Dir, a graduate student at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, is leading the project and hopes that the study leads to “mobile phone-based prevention techniques” to prevent sexual assault.

The project is scheduled to end in May of 2016.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @nikicole19