Analysis Of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples

In 1998, Bruce Rind, Robert Bauserman, and Philip Tromovitch came out with a journal article called, “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties Of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples.” This article was particularly controversial based on the information that was provided in the journal. In the article, it spoke about the how the terminology of child sexual abuse and other words associated with it could be misinterpreted and the use of the word can be described for many different interactions. It later goes on to critiquing three different literature reviews that were related to child sexual abuse.

Some of the problems that I faced while reading their journal article was one, using college samples for a child sexual abuse understanding.

If Rind were to do research on child sexual abuse, you should be basing your focus on gathering information on children rather than young adults to actually make your research more valid. I find it strange that they explained using a college sample would be beneficial to their research study, even though doing research children would be more risky, it would make a lot more sense to have a better sample. One other important part of the journal article that really seemed to bother me was in the summary and conclusion. Where Rind (1998) says that, “… CSA by nature is such a powerfully negative force that (a) it is likely to cause harm, (b) most children or adolescents who experience it will be affected, (c) this harm will typically be severe or intense, and (d) CSA will have an equivalently negative impact on both boys and girls” (p. 46). I feel like that statement is both very powerful and controversial and a lot of people will definitely take this article and read that statement and find it to be horrifying to read something like that. It is terrifying to read that children will be harmed severely or

The first one is by Steven J. Ondersma (2001) called, “Sex With Children is Abuse: Comment on Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998).” This article seemed to be a little more just informative and then they go into the analysis of Rind’s journal. Ondersma (2001) mentions that, “Although we do not endorse Rind et al.’s date, it is our belief that the findings themselves are not cause for anything other than normal scientific skepticism” (p. 708). I could not agree more with that statement. What I really seemed to enjoy about this article is that they even go further to talking about science and morality and also scientific responsibility and scientific freedom. These authors were true to what they were saying and they were also professional about what they had to say about Rind’s (1998) journal article. I really appreciated what they had to say and instead of basically just saying that the Rind article was pretty much useless, they even suggested that the article should have gone through peer review before ever being submitted. In the next article by Stephanie J. Dallam (2001) called, “The Effects of Child Sexual Abuse, Comment on Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauseman (1998).” I also enjoyed reading this article as well and what the author had to say. I liked that they mentioned what I had said earlier about the sample use of college students. This article has mentioned the same thing. This