A METAANALYTIC REVIEW OF FINDINGS FROM NATIONAL SAMPLES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

In response to the availability of a growing literature on the psychol ogical correlates of child sexual abuse (CSA), numerous researchers ha ve conducted literature reviews of these correlates. These reviewers h ave generally reported that CSA is associated with a wide variety of a djustment problems, and many have additionally implied or concluded th at, in the population of persons with CSA experiences, (a) CSA causes psychological harm, (b) this harm is pervasive, (c) this harm is inten se, and (d) boys and girls experience CSA equivalently. However, with few exceptions, these reviewers have included in their reviews mostly studies using clinical and legal samples; these samples cannot be assu med to be representative of the general population. To evaluate the im plications and conclusions of these reviewers, we conducted a literatu re review of seven studies using national probability samples, which a re more appropriate for making population inferences. We found that, c ontrary to the implications and conclusions contained in previous lite rature reviews that were focused on biased samples, in the general pop ulation, CSA is not associated with pervasive harm and that harm, when it occurs, is not typically intense. Further, CSA experiences for mal es and females are not equivalent; a substantially lower proportion of males reports negative effects. Finally, we found that conclusions ab out a causal link between CSA and later psychological maladjustment in the general population cannot safely be made because of the reliable presence of confounding variables. We concluded by cautioning that ana lysis at the population level does not characterize individual cases: When CSA is accompanied by factors such as force or close familial tie s, it has the potential to produce significant harm.