Mental health articles

PREVALENCE OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
Several studies have attempted to determine the prevalence of child sexual abuse within specific populations. These studies are far different from incidence studies as they represent not only victims of child sexual abuse coming to the attention of authorities, but also those whose abuse was never reported and substantiated. As
mentioned earlier, unreported abuse represents the vast majority of all child sexual abuse cases. By asking adolescent or adult respondents whether they were victims of child sexual abuse, these retrospective prevalence studies give a much different, and more realistic, picture of the scope of the problem of child sexual abuse.
Prevalence studies of child sexual abuse represent a variety of populations and methodological rigor. Prevalence studies can be random or nonrandom, with the most rigorous studies being random. Within random studies, an important objective is to representatively sample a larger population so that the findings can be
generalized to that population. The most important random surveys are those that sample an unbiased community, state, or national population. If random studies lack
sufficient methodological rigor, however, their ability to generalize becomes
somewhat meaningless. Another important objective of studies, therefore, is to be of sufficient methodological rigor that valid estimates of prevalence within a clearly defined margin of error can be obtained.
The purpose of the following sections is to review random studies of the
prevalence of child sexual abuse, noting their methodological variations. For ease of presentation, random surveys in the United States are presented in Table A5- 1 (at the end of the chapter). These tables are divided by type of survey, including adolescent,               
community, state, and national populations. The following sections review these studies and then present brief analyses of the effects of methodology on reported prevalence. (A fuller explication of methodology can be found in Chapter 4,“Methodology.”)

Tags: sexual abuse