In a national survey of 1,000 parents, which primarily concerned disci
plinary practices and violence toward their children, two questions we
re asked about whether the children had been sexually abused. This was
to assess the feasibility of epidemiological research on contemporane
ous sexual abuse using parental interviews rather than the usual adult
retrospective approach. From these questions, rates of sexual abuse f
or children currently 0-17 were estimated at 1.9% in the last year and
5.7% ever. The cases making up these rates included a nearly equal nu
mber of boys and girls and no female victims between the ages of 9 and
12, a distribution different from those generally obtained by other e
pidemiological methods, but due possibly in this case to normal sampli
ng variation. Cases were more likely to be disclosed for children whos
e parents had themselves been sexually abused, who were from lower inc
ome households, or who were living with only one biologic parent. Alth
ough some of the findings suggest caution in generalizing about child
sexual abuse from survey samples of parents, the method is worthy of e
xploration if only to gain better epidemiologic data about parent know
ledge, reaction, reporting, and coping strategies. Copyright (C) 1996
Elsevier Science Ltd