Our comprehensive meta-analysis combined prevalence figures of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) reported in 217 publications published between 1980 and 2008, including 331 independent samples with a total of 9,911,748 participants. The overall estimated CSA prevalence was 127/1000 in self-report studies and 4/1000 in informant studies. Self-reported CSA was more common among female (180/1000) than among male participants (76/1000). Lowest rates for both girls (113/1000) and boys (41/1000) were found in Asia, and highest rates were found for girls in Australia (215/1000) and for boys in Africa (193/1000). The results of our meta-analysis confirm that CSA is a global problem of considerable extent, but also show that methodological issues drastically influence the self-reported prevalence of CSA.
Our comprehensive meta-analysis combined prevalence figures of child physical abuse reported in 111 studies, including 168 independent samples with a total of 9,698,801 participants. The overall estimated prevalence was 3/1000 for studies using informants and 226/1000 for studies using self-report measures of child physical abuse, with no apparent gender differences. Methodological factors partly explained the vast variation of self-reported prevalence rates in individual studies. The highest prevalence rates were found for studies using a broad definition of child physical abuse, studies measuring physical abuse over the longest period of 0-18 years, studies using college samples, studies in which adults served as respondents, and studies using more questions on physical abuse. Cultural-geographical factors did not seem to affect prevalence rates of physical abuse, which may be partly due to procedural factors. More crosscultural research on physical abuse is badly needed, especially in Africa and South America. We conclude that child physical abuse is a widespread, global phenomenon affecting the lives of millions of children all over the world, which is in sharp contrast with the United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child.
BackgroundConsistent findings about the effectiveness of parent programs to prevent or reduce child maltreatment are lacking.MethodsIn the present meta-analysis we synthesized findings from 27 independent samples from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the effectiveness of 20 different intervention programs aimed at (i) preventing the occurrence of child maltreatment in the general population or with at-risk but non-maltreating families, or (ii) reducing the incidence of child maltreatment in maltreating families.ResultsA significant combined effect on maltreatment (d = 0.13; N = 4883) disappeared after the trim-and-fill approach that takes into account publication bias against smaller studies without significant outcomes. However, moderator analyses showed that larger effect sizes were found for more recent studies, studies with smaller samples, programs that provide parent training instead of only support, programs that target maltreating instead of at-risk families, and programs with a moderate length (6–12 months) or a moderate number of sessions (16–30).ConclusionsMore RCTs are needed to further unravel which factors are associated with program effectiveness. Because currently existing programs appeared to only reduce and not prevent child maltreatment, efforts in the field of preventive intervention should also focus on the development and testing of preventive programs for families at risk for child maltreatment.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-2387-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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