Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, 125 McConnell Hall, 15 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, United States of America.
Crimes against Children Research Center, University of New Hampshire, 125 McConnell Hall, 15 Academic Way, Durham, NH 03824, United States of America.
Child Abuse Negl. 2024 Mar;149:106634. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2024.106634. Epub 2024 Jan 15.
Research efforts are measuring various forms of online sexual abuse. There is a need to incorporate such measures of online sexual abuse into the calculation of overall prevalence rates for child sexual abuse.
A sample of 2639 respondents aged 18-to-28 was recruited from a nationally representative online panel.
Using an online questionnaire, respondents were assessed via self-report about 9 types of online sexual abuse in childhood and were also assessed with 2 questions that have been used to assess generic child sexual abuse prevalence in previous surveys.
The addition of the online abuse to the generic questions about child sexual abuse raised the overall prevalence rate from 13.5 % to 21.7 %. The rate for females increased from 19.8 % to 31.6 % and for males from 6.2 % to 10.8 %. The largest independent contribution to the overall combined increase were the offenses involving non-consensual image sharing and voluntary online sexual interactions with an impermissibly older adult partner. The inclusion of the online sexual abuse exposures also increased the ability to identify the survivors with the highest levels of current psychological distress.
The study highlights the importance of counting and including online sexual abuse in efforts to estimate the overall prevalence of childhood sexual abuse. The paper proposes 2 or 3 questions that could be added to sexual abuse questionnaires to assess these online offenses efficiently.
研究工作正在衡量各种形式的网络性虐待。需要将这些网络性虐待的测量纳入儿童性虐待总体流行率的计算中。
从全国代表性在线小组中招募了 2639 名年龄在 18 至 28 岁的受访者。
使用在线问卷，通过自我报告评估受访者在儿童时期经历的 9 种网络性虐待形式，并使用 2 个问题来评估以前调查中通用的儿童性虐待流行率。
将网络虐待纳入通用的儿童性虐待问题中，将总体流行率从 13.5%提高到 21.7%。女性的比例从 19.8%上升到 31.6%，男性从 6.2%上升到 10.8%。对整体综合增长的最大独立贡献是涉及非自愿图像共享和与不允许的成年伴侣自愿在线性互动的犯罪。包括网络性虐待暴露也增加了识别当前心理困扰程度最高的幸存者的能力。
本研究强调了在估计儿童性虐待总体流行率时，计数和包括网络性虐待的重要性。本文提出了 2 或 3 个可以添加到性虐待问卷中以有效地评估这些网络犯罪的问题。
