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A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child
Sexual Abuse Using College Samples
Bruce Rind
Department of Psychology
Philip Tromovitch
Graduate School of Education
Robert Bauserman
Department of Psychology University of Michigan
Note*
[NOTE: For references to this article, the original page
numbers are added.
This is page 22]
Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse (CSA) causes
intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population.
The authors
examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses
revealed that students with CSA were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than
controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family
environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more
adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant
when studies controlled for FE.
Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated
that negative effects were
neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted
much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data
from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not
supported.
[The notes are originally placed at the same page they
appear]
* Bruce Rind, Department of Psychology, temple University;
Philip Tromovitch, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania;
Robert Bauserman, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
We thank Ralph Rosnow for his meta-analytic advice and comments on an earlier draft
and Steve Wexler for his helpful comments.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bruce Rind,
Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pensylvania 19122 [USA].
Electronic mail may be sent to rind@vm.temple.edu