Hi everyone. Can you believe that we are at the end of July this weekend? Time is flying!
For this Food for Thought Friday we have a study titled "Profiles and behavioral consequences of child abuse among adolescent girls and boys from Barbados and Grenada" by Agata Debowska, Daniel Boduszek, Nicole Sherretts, Dominic Willmott, and Adele D. Jones of the University of Sheffield and University of Huddersfield. It is published in Child Abuse & Neglect, (Volume 79, May 2018, Pages 245-258) [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2018.02.018]
Abstract
The current study used latent class analysis to uncover groups of youths with specific abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) profiles in and outside the family, and identify how membership in each abuse group is associated with behavioural outcomes. Data were collected among a sample of male (n = 662; M age = 13.02 years) and female (n = 689; M age = 12.95 years) children and adolescents (9–17 years old) from Barbados and Grenada.
Self-report surveys were completed by participants in school settings. Three latent classes of child abuse were distinguished among boys, including ‘low abuse’ (39.2% of the sample), ‘physical and emotional abuse high outside/medium in the family’ (43.2%), and ‘high overall abuse’ (17.6%). Among girls, four unique classes were recovered: ‘low abuse’ (40.7%), ‘high physical and emotional abuse outside the family’ (7.6%), ‘high emotional and moderate physical abuse’ (33.9%), and ‘high overall abuse’ (17.8%).
Compared with members of low abuse groups, youths who reported having experienced high/moderate levels of various forms of violence, including those who were abused in multiple ways and across the two settings (‘high overall abuse’), were significantly more likely to engage in violent and hostile behaviour. Abused and non-abused youths did not differ on non-violent conflict resolution skills. The significance of present findings for future research and practice is discussed.
We encourage you to read this article in its entirety due to its direct link to the Caribbean. We will reproduce an excerpt from the Introduction below and follow it with a link to the PDF of the manuscript.
Introduction
Barbados and Grenada are English-speaking nations located in the Eastern Caribbean region. According to data extracted from the Child Care Board, 3519 cases of child abuse involving 4868 children were reported in Barbados in 2008-2013. The most common form of maltreatment was neglect (n= 1471cases; 41.8%), followed by physical abuse (n= 861; 24.5%). As for sexual abuse, there were 836cases recorded (23.8% of all cases), with the majority (86.5%) of perpetrators being known to the victim. A total of 342 (10%) cases were those involving emotional abuse. Of the total number of reported cases, 57.6% (n= 2803) involved female victims.The disparity between the two sexes was especially high for sexual abuse, with 88.6% (n= 782) of victims being female(UNICEF, 2015a).
It must be noted here, however, that male survivors are less likely to report experiences of sexual abuse than their female counterparts, which may be due to the perceived loss of masculinity associated with this form of victimization (Finkelhor & Browne, 1985; Johnson et al.,2006).
In Grenada, official data on child abuse are collated by the Child Protection Authority. During the period 2009-2013, there were 1503 reported cases of child victimization, with physical abuse being the most prevalent type of maltreatment (n= 524; 34.9%), followed closely by neglect (n= 497; 33.1%) and sexual abuse (n= 438; 29.1%) (UNICEF, 2015b). When the above incidence rates are converted into period prevalence, it seems that in 2008-2013 approximately 1-2% of children and adolescents in Barbados and Grenada experienced abuse.
Notwithstanding the importance of those official reports, survey studies demonstrate a much higher proportion of children with a history of maltreatment than officially recorded by child protection services (CPS) (Gilbert et al., 2009). Although such research is sparse in the Eastern Caribbean, some studies have attempted to fill this critical knowledge gap. For instance, James et al. (2016), in a study among 1227 young adults in Barbados, Grenada, and Jamaica, revealed that 13.4% of females and 8.7% of males have experienced either physical or sexual abuse in childhood. These results, however, should be tempered by the fact that prevalence of physical and/or sexual abuse was reported as a single value.
In a qualitative study into perceptions and attitudes to child sexual abuse in the Eastern Caribbean, it was demonstrated that although girls are more vulnerable victims than boys, abuse of boys, including sexual abuse,is a significant problem (Jones & Trotman Jemmott, 2009). Male victims in the region are unlikely to divulge abuse, which may be due to social ostracism that such a disclosure may entail, as well as the fear of being branded homosexual (Jones & Trotman Jemmott, 2009; UNICEF, 2013).
Of note, high abuse rates among boys were also reported in studies conducted in other non-Western societies, including India (Charak & Koot, 2014) and Malaysia (Choo, Dunne, Marret, Fleming,& Wong, 2011). This suggests that study findings conducted in the West are not reflective of the situation of children embedded in different cultural contexts and that more research with non-Western populations across geographical locations is needed to obtain a clearer picture of abuse rates and patterns worldwide.
Finally, although a recent WHO (2014) study revealed that 36% of adults worldwide were emotionally abused in childhood and emotional abuse has been recognized as an important risk to health (see Norman et al., 2012 for a systematic review and meta-analysis), studies examining the rates and consequences of this form of ill-treatment in Barbadian and Grenadian context are missing.
Please access the PDF of the manuscript at - https://eprints.whiterose.ac.u...647/1/Manuscript.pdf
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