NCJ Number
155629
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Dated: (June 1995) Pages: 159-175
Date Published
1995
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study was designed to increase understanding of the impact of the child sexual abuse experience by identifying relationships among trauma-producing abuse dynamics, the level of achievement of cognitive coping tasks, and later outcomes for adult survivors of child sexual abuse.
Abstract
A group of 149 adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse was used to test a causal model that identifies relationships among sexual abuse situation characteristics, based on Finkelhor and Browne's traumagenic model of childhood sexual abuse; the achievement of cognitive-coping tasks, based on Taylor's theory of cognitive adaptation; and long-term effects of the abuse. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed paths and the goodness of fit of the model. Results show that the model did not fit the data, but conclusions related to the explanatory power of the model could not be drawn because of the low reliabilities of several of the scales; however, five of the hypothesized direct relationships and one of the hypothesized indirect relationships were significant. In the original model, powerlessness was related directly to mastery and indirectly to interpersonal victimization, and traumatic stigmatization was directly related to meaning. In the revised model, stigmatization and powerlessness were both directly related to meaning. In addition, both powerlessness and stigmatization were indirectly related to both guilt and social introversion. These relationships support the general hypothesis that characteristics of one's abuse experience may predict later effects; however, the hypothesized relationships between other dynamics and predicted variables were not significant. 2 tables, 3 figures, and 23 references