Comparisons of the perceptions of child abuse by those adults who were abused as children and by nonabused adults

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of what constitutes child abuse, specifically physical, sexual and emotional abuse by the survey respondents who were victims of abuse and by survey respondents who had not been abused. Methods: Procedures involved in the study included the following: selected results of the Child Welfare Survey conducted under the auspices of the Survey Research Program, Raymond H.C. Teske, Jr., Ph.D., Program Director and as described in the report written by Allen Sapp, Sr. and David Carter, were used as the data base for the present study. The data are secondary in that they were gathered for a purpose other than this thesis. Of the 1,339 persons responding to the survey, 192 persons (14%) indicated that they had been victims of abuse by parent or other adult in the past; 1,119 persons (83%) indicated that they had not been victims of abuse; and twenty-eight persons did not respond to the item on prior abuse. The sample was dichotomized into two groups on the basis of their affirmative or negative response to the question of abuse as a child. Respondents indicating, they had been victims of abuse as children were placed into an (AB) group and respondents who indicated no abuse as children were placed into the non-abused (NAB) group for the purposes of this study. Comparisons were tested using the Chi square test for independence to determine whether items were checked as abusive in each category of physical, sexual and emotional abuse would be differentiated in the two groups in terms of their past abuse and their perception of what constitutes abuse. A Yates’ correction for continuity was used so that an adjustment was made in the computational format for Chi square. The strength of the relationship was tested with a delta-based measure of association; Cramer’s V. Findings: The present study examined the research question as to whether or not there is a difference in the perceptions of what constitutes child abuse between the two groups. The null hypothesis that there is no significant difference between persons abused as children and persons not abused as children in terms of their perceptions of what constitutes physical, sexual and emotional abuse was tested and not rejected. The sub hypotheses were tested on the overall groupings of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and differences were not found to be statistically significant. Additional statistical analyses were performed on thirty-seven "individual" items representing physical, sexual and emotional abuse to determine if there was a significant difference in the perceptions of what constitutes specific types of abuse between the two groups in terms of their selection of an item as abusive. Of the thirty-seven individual items, seven were found to be statistically significant in the direction hypothesized. However, when a delta-based Cramer's V measure of association was used to calculate the degree of strength of the association, it was found that although a relation- ship was significant, the strength of it was not sufficiently high enough to make a conclusive assessment. The remaining thirty individual items representing physical, sexual and emotional abuse were found to be nonsignificant. It was concluded that there is no difference in perceptions of what constitutes physical, sexual and emotional abuse between the two groups. It is suggested that future studies address the beliefs and attitudes of child-rearing practices and punishment as a disciplinary technique by a com- parable group of abusers and non-abusers. It is further suggested that a questionnaire be designed to specifically examine the perceptions of what constitutes abuse by abusing parents and a comparison group of non-abusers.

Grantor dc:publisher

Sam Houston State University

Year dc:date.issued

1979

Author dc:creator

• McNutt, Janet Ann,1955-

Contributors dc:contributor

• Young, Jeanne P.
• Raymond H.C. Teske, Jr., Ph.D.
• Donald Weisenhorn, M.S.W
• Victor G. Strecher

• Child abuse.

Language dc:language

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11875/5311

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:tdl-ir.tdl.org:20.500.11875/5311