NCJ Number
140044
Journal
Child Abuse and Neglect Volume: 16 Issue: 5 Dated: (September-October 1992) Pages: 719-725
Date Published
1992
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Structured interviews were conducted by a child psychologist with 13 alleged subjects of child sexual abuse, using sexually anatomically correct dolls. The videotaped interviews were shown to 14 observers including pediatricians, child psychiatrists, social workers, attorneys, and psychologists to determine if these professionals would agree on the children's sexual abuse status.
Abstract
These findings showed that professionals experienced with the problems of sexually abused children could not agree with each other about a child's abuse status. Because use of the anatomically correct dolls neither triggered unusual behaviors in the sample of nonabused children nor deviant behaviors indicating abuse in abused children, the professionals were better able to identify nonabused, rather than abused, children. The authors therefore concluded that the use of the dolls is inadequate in providing enough information for professionals to accurately assess the abuse status of young children. They note that mental health professionals were more likely to agree with the interviewer's determination of abuse than with the child's actual abuse status. Future research should focus on identifying observational variances and their effect on clinical decisionmaking. 1 table and 20 references