Citation

Stoltenborgh M, van Ijzendoorn MH, Euser EM, Bakermans-Kranenburg MJ. Child Maltreat. 2011; 16(2): 79-101.

Affiliation

Centre for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1077559511403920

PMID

21511741

Abstract

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.

Language: en