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The ability of elementary school children to learn child sexual abuse prevention concepts
1Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Insights
Child abuse prevention programs significantly improve children's knowledge of abuse, with knowledge increasing with age. This understanding is retained long-term, showing program effectiveness.
Area of Science:
- Child Psychology
- Educational Psychology
- Public Health
Background:
- Methodological limitations exist in current research on child abuse prevention programs.
- Elementary school-aged children are a key demographic for early intervention.
- Assessing program efficacy requires robust measurement tools.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the efficacy of the 'Touching' child abuse prevention program.
- To introduce and validate a new psychometric tool, the Children's Knowledge of Abuse Questionnaire (C.K.A.Q.).
- To examine long-term knowledge retention and the influence of age and pretesting.
Main Methods:
- Development and psychometric assessment of the C.K.A.Q.
- Quasi-experimental design with 400 elementary school children in intervention and control groups.
- Pretesting and posttesting (5-month follow-up) to assess knowledge and retention.
Main Results:
- Children in the 'Touching' program demonstrated significantly higher C.K.A.Q. scores than controls.
- Knowledge gains were positively correlated with age across grade levels (K-6).
- All participants maintained acquired knowledge at the 5-month follow-up.
Conclusions:
- The 'Touching' program is effective in enhancing children's knowledge of abuse.
- The C.K.A.Q. is a reliable measure for assessing knowledge in child abuse prevention.
- Findings support the long-term benefits and age-related effectiveness of targeted prevention strategies.
Abstract:
This research was designed to address several of the methodological problems in the current body of knowledge on the efficacy of child abuse prevention programs for elementary school-aged children. A new measure, the Children's Knowledge of Abuse Questionnaire (C.K.A.Q.) was developed, and its psychometric properties assessed. In total, 400 children were tested in four groups. Half of the sample participated in a child abuse prevention program Touching, and the other half were in a waiting list control group. Half of each group were pretested, and the other half were not, in order to determine whether the pretesting sensitized the students. All children were tested again 5 months afterward to investigate the long-term retention of prevention concepts. Results showed that children who participated in the prevention program scored significantly higher on the C.K.A.Q. than children in the control condition. Age was a critical factor, with significant improvements as age increased between the kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 3 and Grade 6 students. All participants maintained their level of knowledge after 5 months had passed. The relevance and practical implications which stem from this research are discussed.