Parental practice of child sexual abuse prevention education in China: Does it have an influence on child's outcome?

Abstract

Parents play a crucial role as protectors and educators of their children, with whom they are in an ideal position to share prevention information. This study aimed to investigate whether Chinese parents' knowledge, attitude and practice regarding child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention could be explained by health behavior change theory and whether parental practice influenced children's CSA prevention skills. Data were collected from 452 families (comprising father, mother, and child) with self-administered questionnaires gathering information on demographics, parental knowledge, attitude, educational practice regarding CSA prevention, and children's CSA prevention knowledge and strategies. Data were analysed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to assess the relationships between variables. SEM analyses indicated that parents' knowledge had an indirect effect on their educational practice (β = 0.35), mediated by attitude. Parents' educational practice regarding CSA prevention directly influenced children's self-protection skills (β = 0.21, χ2[30] = 60.909, RMSEA = 0.053, IFI = 0.905, CFI = 0.901, TLI = 0.852). The study findings suggest that parents can be effective instructors by enhancing their children's capacities to protect themselves from CSA. Efforts are therefore needed to encourage parents to engage in CSA prevention education with their children and to provide parents with necessary knowledge, communicative techniques, and resources to do so.