A B S T RA C TChildren rarely disclose sexual abuse. Hence, studies of children's abuse experiences are relatively rare. This paper reports on a qualitative analysis of 2986 cases of self-disclosure of sexual abuse from children, aged 5-18 years, who contacted ChildLine Scotland, a free, confidential telephone counselling service. Children discussed their feelings regarding the abuse, the impact of abuse on their health and well-being, sources of support, disclosure, coping strategies, the context in which abuse occurs and the various ways in which they were groomed or their compliance in abuse was gained. Children's narratives contained detailed contextual information on their experiences of sexual abuse, perpetrators of sexual abuse and the circumstances in which sexual abuse occurs. The way in which children communicated about sexual abuse was found to differ quite considerably, and the terminology they employed was often markedly different from adult constructs. Nonetheless, children of all ages were able to describe their experiences and their feelings around the abuse in considerable detail. This study provides a rare insight into children's accounts of sexual abuse. The findings illustrate the profound impact that sexual abuse has on the lives of children and their understandings of the circumstances in which abuse occurs.
We found a lower than expected level of anxiety and depression in ICD patients, and suggest that this may be due in part to the small team approach adopted locally in the follow-up of this patient group.
Qualitative researchers who explore sensitive topics may expose themselves to emotional distress. Consequently, researchers are often faced with the challenge of maintaining emotional equilibrium during the research process. However, discussion on the management of difficult emotions has occupied a peripheral place within accounts of research practice. With rare exceptions, the focus of published accounts is concentrated on the analysis of the emotional phenomena that emerge during the collection of primary research data. Hence, there is a comparative absence of a dialogue around the emotional dimensions of working with secondary data sources. This article highlights some of the complex ways in which emotions enter the research process during secondary analysis, and the ways in which we engaged with and managed emotional states such as anger, sadness, and horror. The concepts of emotional labor and emotional reflexivity are used to consider the ways in which we "worked with" and "worked on" emotion. In doing so, we draw on our collective experiences of working on two collaborative projects with ChildLine Scotland in which a secondary analysis was conducted on children's narratives of distress, worry, abuse, and neglect.
Introducing the cumulative trivia concept The aim of this article is to introduce a concept postulated by Hockey in a personal communication to staff at the Queen's Nursing Institute, Scotland, called cumulative trivia (Hockey, 1999, cited in Balaam et al., 2001). The cumulative trivia hypothesis holds that some older people may experience a continual accumulation of small, individually minor events or difficulties that degrade their resilience until they 'cannot cope with another thing' (Hockey, 1999, cited in Balaam et al., 2001). Older people experience a number of small problems in
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