In this report we describe (a) the collaborative efforts undertaken across a number of institutions in the 2017-2018 academic year to support the sustainability of the SMART Consent initiative, (b) new background research on sexual consent, and (c) future directions and the extension of consent programming to other formats. This report is the latest work package in a programme of research and development that began in 2013 with a study of college students’ understanding of consent. That research was commissioned by Rape Crisis Network Ireland, published in 2014 as Young people, alcohol, and sex: What’s consent got to do with it (MacNeela, Conway, Kavanagh, Kennedy, & McCaffrey, 2014).

In that study, we established that college students strongly believed in not doing harm to others and not having sex without consent. At the same time the findings revealed differences between individuals in the interpretation of ambiguous factors concerning consent – a reliance on alcohol in casual sex, varied views on how much alcohol is too much before consent cannot be given, when consent to earlier intimacy means that consent still applies later in the same encounter, the assumptions prompted by gender norms and other social expectations, and so on.

Chapter: Alcohol and consent: sensitivity to alcohol consumption levels p.13
• Percentage of students selecting ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ in response to items concerning Carol. p.15
• Percentage of students selecting ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ in response to items concerning Neil. p.16