Gore-Felton C, Arnow B, Koopman C, Thoresen C, Spiegel D
Stanford University, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, CA, USA.
Child Abuse Negl. 1999 Aug;23(8):803-11. doi: 10.1016/s0145-2134(99)00051-4.
This study examined the influence of sexual abuse history, gender, theoretical orientation, and age on beliefs about the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse among clinical and counseling psychologists.
A mail survey design was used in this study. Participants were randomly selected from the American Psychological Association membership database. There were 615 psychologists who completed self-report measures on beliefs about the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse and demographic characteristics.
Overall, clinicians' scores on the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse were moderate. There were significant gender differences on beliefs, suggesting that women were more likely believe that childhood sexual abuse is a common occurrence compared to men. Multiple regression analysis indicated that clinician characteristics (history of sexual abuse, gender, and theoretical orientation) were significantly related to beliefs about the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse. However, these characteristics only accounted for a small amount of the overall variance predicting beliefs.
These results suggest that clinicians do not hold extreme beliefs regarding the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse. Moreover, certain clinician characteristics are associated with their beliefs, which in turn, may impact their clinical judgment and treatment decisions. Furthermore, much of the variance was unaccounted for in the model indicating that psychologists' beliefs are complex and are not unduly influenced by their personal characteristics. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed.
本研究考察了性虐待史、性别、理论取向和年龄对临床及咨询心理学家关于儿童性虐待发生率信念的影响。
本研究采用邮寄调查设计。参与者从美国心理学会会员数据库中随机选取。共有615名心理学家完成了关于儿童性虐待发生率信念及人口统计学特征的自我报告测量。
总体而言，临床医生对儿童性虐待发生率的评分中等。在信念方面存在显著的性别差异，表明与男性相比，女性更有可能认为儿童性虐待是常见现象。多元回归分析表明，临床医生的特征（性虐待史、性别和理论取向）与关于儿童性虐待发生率的信念显著相关。然而，这些特征仅占预测信念的总体方差的一小部分。
这些结果表明，临床医生对儿童性虐待发生率并未持有极端信念。此外，某些临床医生特征与他们的信念相关，这反过来可能会影响他们的临床判断和治疗决策。此外，模型中大部分方差未得到解释，这表明心理学家的信念很复杂，且不会受到其个人特征的过度影响。文中讨论了对临床实践和未来研究的启示。
