J Korean Community Nurs.  1999 Dec;10(2):549-563.

Factors Influencing Perceptions of Child Sexual Abuse: Vignette Study Findings

• Chung MK

Abstract

This paper is a review of findings from studies that have used vignettes to identify salient characteristics that have been found to influence individuals' perceptions of child sexual abuse. Vignette studies finding avoid to unreliable and biased self-reports. A review of the literature revealed that factors influencing the perception process are divided into two groups. One group of factors relates to the details of the abuse situation including characteristics of sexual act (intrusiveness of the sexual act and the frequency of acts), characteristics of victim (age of victim, the gender of victim and victim resistance), and characteristics of perpetrator (age of perpetrator, gender of perpetrator and the relationship of the perpetrator to the child). The other group of factors focused on in research reflects individuals background variables that affect personal interpretations of the abuse situation. These factors include professional affiliation of the respondent and various other. demographics (e.g., gender of respondents, age, education, marital status, parental status, number of children, the length of experience, etc.), along with respondents own child sexual victimization experiences. Based on theses findings vignette studies have allowed researchers to learn how individuals vary their perceptions of various situational aspects of child sexual abuse situations, and how background characteristics of the respondents as observers may influence these perceptions.

MeSH Terms

Bias (Epidemiology)
Child
Child Abuse, Sexual*
Crime Victims
Data Collection
Demography
Education
Humans
Marital Status
Parents