Antecedents and Consequences of Child Abuse

Abstract

Objectives: The study explored the dimensions of antecedents of abuse, such as physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and emotional abuse, which leads to the consequences of child abuse. The data were examined for model fitness towards the causes and effects of child abuse. Methods: The research underwent an empirical study analysing and testing through a structured questionnaire, and the purposive sampling technique was adopted. As many as 500 questionnaires were dispersed among children in various government schools in OMR, Chennai, Kanchipuram district, and finally 325 questionnaires were considered to be usable for analysis. The survey was conducted in the year 2016; the study data were collected over a period of 3 months. The participants chosen for the study were in the age group of 11 to 17 years and were students from high schools and higher secondary schools. The final sample consisted of 325 students. The schools where the participants studied catered mainly to families who belong to lower-middle socioeconomic class. The questionnaire was structured in such a way to elicit demographic details and determine variables to pose questions through different formats, such as Likert Scale, dichotomous questions, and rating scale questions. The secondary data used in our study were gathered from the reports of the primary health care centres functioning near the schools covered in our study. Findings/ application: Reliability of the items in the questionnaire was above 0.65, and on final consolidation, Multiple Regressions and SEM were used to test the hypotheses; statistical analysis was carried out using software such as SPSS 2.0 and AMOS 2.1. Stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed, taking Physical Abuse, Sexual Abuse, and Neglect and Emotional Abuse as the independent variables and Child Abuse as the dependent variable. All the dimensions of antecedents emerged as significant predictors to child abuse. The collinearity statistics revealed the absence of multicollinearity between independent variables. As for relative importance of each variable, physical abuse (0.71), sexual abuse (0.88), neglect (0.83), and emotional abuse (0.75) made the strongest contribution in exploring the dependent variable. This resulted in the rejection of null hypothesis. Multiple determination factor R2 (Goodness of fit) value was 0.39, and F value of the regression, 79.87 (p < 0.01). Factor R of multiple cross-correlations showed high cross-correlation, which is less than the acceptable level of 0.01; the results of CFA suggest that the factor loadings for all major variables range between 0.89 and 0.98. SEM was performed to test the goodness of fit using large sample size, and the following values were obtained: Goodness of fit (GFI) indices = 0.98, AGFI = 0.90, CMIN = 77.8, PGFI = 0.37, RMSEA = 0.07, CFI = 0.999, GFI = 0.99, and IFI = 0.99.Keywords: Child Abuse, Antecedents, Consequences, Physical, Emotional, Sexual Abuse