Relation of reports of sexual abuse to scores on Self Defeating Personality Scale

One of the suggested antecedents of a pattern of self-defeating behavior has been the experience of sexual abuse. In this study 146 male and 129 female college students self-reported whether they had experienced sexual abuse using Russell's 1983) Sexual Abuse Interview Schedule. Thirty-nine men and 73 women self reported in the affirmative. For both men and women, the abused groups had significantly higher scores on Schill's 1990 Self-defeating Personality Scale. Results were related to other research, e.g., Kisler and Schill's 1995 work which showed scores on the Self-defeating scale were also correlated with scores on measures of bulimia and dissociative experiences.