Briere J, Elliott D M
Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences, University of Southern California School of Medicine, Los Angeles 90033.
J Consult Clin Psychol. 1993 Apr;61(2):284-8; discussion 289-90.
M. R. Nash, T. L. Hulsey, M. C. Sexton, T. L. Harralson, and W. Lambert (1993) reported on the effects of controlling for family environment when studying sexual abuse sequelae. Sexual abuse history was associated with elevated Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and Rorschach scores in a sample of 105 women, but many of the reported differences disappeared when a Family Functioning Scale score was used as a covariate. The present article considers the findings of Nash et al. in terms of the theoretical and statistical constraints placed on analysis of covariance and other partializing procedures. Because family dysfunction is not always causally antecedent to sexual abuse, and given the quasi-experimental quality of most abuse research, the use of covariate techniques to test hypotheses about the causal role of family environment in the impacts of sexual abuse may be ill advised. Analyses of a 2,964-subject data set illustrate these concerns.
M. R. 纳什、T. L. 赫尔西、M. C. 塞克斯顿、T. L. 哈拉尔森和W. 兰伯特（1993年）报告了在研究性虐待后遗症时控制家庭环境的影响。在105名女性样本中，性虐待史与明尼苏达多相人格调查表及罗夏测验分数升高有关，但当家庭功能量表分数用作协变量时，许多报告的差异消失了。本文根据协方差分析和其他分层程序在理论和统计上的限制来考虑纳什等人的研究结果。由于家庭功能失调并不总是性虐待的因果前因，而且鉴于大多数虐待研究的准实验性质，使用协变量技术来检验关于家庭环境在性虐待影响中的因果作用的假设可能并不明智。对一个包含2964名受试者的数据集的分析说明了这些问题。
