The Effect of Intervention on Knowledge of Abuse, Assertiveness and Self-Concept to Resist Child Sexual Abuse Among Girl Children

Child sexual abuse is an issue that transcends caste, creed, class or socioeconomic status and is found to be widespread in India. The problem of the present study was to find the effectiveness of an intervention on resisting sexual abuse among girl children, aged ll-13years, of girls belonging to standard six and seven from a Government school in Chennai, using the experimental research design. The effect of the independent variable- the intervention on resisting abuse on the dependent variables, knowledge of sexual abuse, self concept and assertiveness was studied among girl children. The inclusion criteria included girl children aged 11-13 years from the lower socio economic status. The exclusion criteria included those girls presently going through sexual abuse. The sample of 60 girl children, 30 girls in the experimental group and 30 girls in the control group was selected through random sampling, The tools used included the Children's knowledge of abuse questionnaire by Tutty, the Self-Concept scale by Piers and Harris and the Children's Assertiveness inventory by Ollander. The main study was conducted in four phases: pre-training assessment, implementation, post-training assessment and follow up. The data collected was analyzed using the paired t test, trend analysis and the repeated measures ANOVA to test the various hypotheses of the study. Pearson's product moment correlation was used to assess the relationship between the variables studied. Results obtained indicate that the Knowledge of abuse of girl children has significantly improved after the resisting abuse intervention. The intervention has also been effective in enhancing the assertiveness of children, but has not had a significant impact on the self-concept levels of the sample. There has not been maintenance of the learning acquired on knowledge of abuse and assertiveness among the children over the follow- up period. The trend analysis indicates that the knowledge of sexual abuse component of the intervention has been effective in bringing about change in the experimental group, during the post-test period. However, the gain in knowledge has not been maintained over the follow-up period.