IAAOC Research Consortium

The IAAOC Research Consortium is an annual event that takes place during the American Counseling Association’s national conference. IAAOC members are invited to present their research work via posters to highlight current professional issues, best practices, and innovative research specific to addictions and offender counseling. Please find the handout for the event here.

2023 IAAOC Research Consortium Presenters:

Pornography Use and Sexting Trends Among American Adolescents

Presented by: Kervins Clement, Adrienne Rhianna Shook, Ellie Potts, & Amanda Lee Giordano

Affordable, accessible, and anonymous (Cooper, 1998) are all elements that play an important role in how adolescents develop their sexuality. Herbenick et al. (2020) reported that 94% of men and 87% of women have viewed pornography at some point during their lifetime. Furthermore, sexting has increase since the first introduction in 2005 by the Daily Telegraph, which officially became a word in 2009 (Gasso et al., 2019). Sexting among adolescents was associated with sexual activity, multiple sexual partners, lack of contraception use, delinquent behavior, anxiety/depression, alcohol use, drug use, and smoking behavior (Mori et al., 2019). Sexting and pornography are used by individuals who struggle with sex addiction (Carnes & Adams, 2020). As a result of these research studies, a gap emerged between pornography exposure and sexting.

In this presentation, the participants will learn about a research study that explored the relationship between pornography exposure and sexting among adolescents. The current trends of pornography and sexting will be described in the presentation. Furthermore, it will highlight the different ways sexting and pornography impacts adolescents. This presentation will also provide strategies to professionals on how to help adolescents process sexting and pornography. The connection sex addiction has with sexting and pornography will be addressed in the presentation. The symptomology of sex addiction will also be explained in presentation. In conclusion, the presentation was created to help educators and counselors become aware of the growing concerns regarding pornography and sexting.

Content Development and Initial Psychometric Analysis of the Problematic Hypersexuality Scale

Presented by: S. Tyler Oberheim & M. Kristina DePue

The purpose for developing the Problematic Hypersexuality Scale (PHS) was to develop an instrument to screen for the presence of problematic hypersexuality (PH) while addressing the limitations of existing measures of the PH construct. Content development for the PHS employed the sexual addiction framework (Carnes, 1983) to create an item pool that was meant to capture all aspects of the PH construct, including both solo and relational sexual behaviors. Additionally, the PHS employed Evidence Centered Design (ECD; Mislevy et al., 2003), which is a methodological framework for assessment development that focuses on the collection of validity evidence from the beginning of the development process (Arieli-Attali et al., 2019). The content development process will be discussed in addition to the administration and data analyses related to the non-clinical sample of 357 adults residing in the United States that were used to gain initial psychometric evidence for the PHS. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis, Rasch modeling and Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses will be interpreted and discussed in relation to the support it provides for the PHS to be used in clinical practice as a screening instrument.

Community College Addiction Studies Students’ Beliefs About Addiction: Implications for Counselor Educators

Presented by: George Stoupas

Counseling students’ beliefs about addiction influence how they respond to new information (Koch, Sneed, Davis, & Benshoof, 2008) as well as how they treat clients with substance use problems in professional practice (Barnett, Hall, Fry, Dilkes-Frayne, & Carter, 2017; Crabb & Linton, 2007; Kelly & Westerhoff, 2010). While there is some research on graduate students’ beliefs about addiction (Chasek, Jorgensen, & Maxson, 2012; Davis & Lauristen, 2016; Goodwin & Sias, 2008), there are almost no published studies regarding the students enrolled in community college addiction studies programs. This presents a significant challenge to counselor educators, as nearly 70% of addiction studies programs in the U.S. are at the associate degree level (Taleff, 2003). This presentation will share the results of a pilot study that addresses this gap in the literature. Students enrolled in a community college addiction studies program (n= 46) completed the Addiction Belief Inventory (ABI; Luke, Ribisl, Walton, & Davidson, 2002), a 30-item instrument designed to measure personal beliefs about addiction along eight subscales: inability to control; chronic disease; reliance on experts; responsibility for actions; responsibility for recovery; genetic basis; coping; and moral weakness. Participants also completed a demographic questionnaire that included questions about personal recovery status, experience working in addiction treatment, and highest previous degree attained, among other variables. Significant correlations were found between several ABI subscales as well as previous education and personal recovery status. Implications for counselor educators working with this population of students will be discussed.