This document provides an introduction, aims and objectives, methodology, and ethical considerations for a research study on the short-term impacts of child sexual abuse (CSA) on psychological health and wellbeing. The study will use standardized scales to quantitatively measure the relationship between CSA experiences and psychological outcomes in a sample of 30 children ages 6-12 who experienced abuse within the last year. Key methodological aspects that could impact validity, like the use of purposive sampling and inability to control confounding factors, are also discussed.

1. SOCA6640 Social Science Research Methods
Answer:
Introduction
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a recognized international issue of great magnitude that can
impact children various ages, colors, races, ethnicities and socioeconomic classes (Mathews
& Collin-Vézina, 2019). In spite of this subject being researched for over thirty years now,
there are various gaps in the knowledge that researchers have about the impacts of child
sexual abuse on children’s Psychological Health And Wellbeing. This gap is pronounced by
the fact that CSA is often misunderstood, presented in an oversimplified manner and has a
number of ethical and legal issues in methodology, which complicates the study of CSA.
Studying the immediate and short-term impacts of CSA is essential as it helps the researcher
acquire a complete picture of the extent to which CSA can cause damage to children, based
on the knowledge of which, mental health professionals can develop interventional plan to
help the child in the recovery process. This research will also amplify the urgent
requirement for formulating preventive strategies to reduce the chances of CSA. On the
social perspective, this issue under study is important, as it will help in the formulation of
CSA recovery plans, policies and programs for children who have been victims of CSA at
both local and national level. This will enhance the process of recovery and lead to the
appropriate assistance that is essential for children with experience of CSA.
Aims And Objectives
The nature of the study at hand will be quantitative in nature. This is because, in this study,
the effect of the experience of CSA in children will be quantitatively measured on the
psychological health and wellbeing of the children. The experience of sexual abuse in the
children will be measured using a standardized victimization scale and the psychological
health and wellbeing of the children will be measured using standardized psychological
tools.
As measurable tools will be used to quantify the CSA experience and the psychological
impacts on the children who have experienced CSA, therefore, the study is quantitative in
nature.

2. The research will be cross-sectional in nature unlike most researches that study the long-
term impacts of CSA on children. The research will take place in the same of point of time.
Purposive sampling technique will be used collecting samples for the study. The sample will
be screened through self-reports of CSA experience and the children’s experience will be
measured using the CSA victimization scale immediately after the screening process
(Bentley, Hartley & Bucci, 2019).
After the screening process, the children’s psychological health and wellbeing will be
measured using psychologically standardized tools. The scales used for the measurement
will have established reliability and validity. After the data is collected, the data will be
analyzed using an appropriate statistical tool.
The advantage of using this research design is that the impact of the CSA experience on the
children will be quantifiable and the use of standardized tools in the measurement will
ensure that the data that is collected is done so in a scientific manner. The purposive
sampling might not be as scientifically sound and free of bias as is the random sampling but
as the sample size is restricted and it’s not easy to randomly choose children with the
experience of CSA. Purposive sampling refers to the process of choosing samples best on the
best judgment of the researcher (Klar & Leeper, 2019). As this a type of non-probability
sampling, therefore, there are huge chances of researcher’s bias operating as a confounding
variable (Sharma, 2017). The research outcome thus obtained with the use of purposive
sampling might not be consistent, reliable or generalizable. Another significant flaw in this
research is the fact that a child’s personality, family support, understanding of the abuse,
resilience, optimism and hope alongside other protective factors cannot be controlled
(Rudolph & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2018). These factors cannot be matched. Therefore, these
factors will operate as extraneous variables, which might interfere with the pure and true
interrelation between the experience of abuse and its impact on the psychological health
and wellbeing of the children.
Research Questions
From the above discussion on the importance of this research and the gap in CSA research,
the research question can be formulated as below:
Is there any short-term impacts of CSA on the psychological health and wellbeing of the
children who are victims?
From the above research question, the two hypotheses that can be developed are as follows:
Alternative hypothesis (H1) – There are negative short-term impacts of CSA on the
psychological health and wellbeing of the children who are victims of CSA.
Null hypothesis (H0) – There are no short-term impacts of CSA on the psychological health

3. and wellbeing of the children who are victims of CSA.
Methodology
Sample
Description
The sample size will be 30 and the children who experienced CSA will be from the age of 6-
12 years of age. The sample demographics will be as follows:
6-12 years of age
Both males and females
From low socio-economic background
From indigenous background
Inclusion Criteria:
The children must be 6-12 years of age
The children can be both males and females
The children should be from low socio-economic background
The children are from indigenous background
The event of sexual abuse must have occurred within the last one year
The sexual abuse event must have occurred within the residential care context (Blakemore
etal., 2017)
It is very difficult to determine and exclusively define ‘short-term’ in this research context.
The ‘short-term’ can be considered one-year time in case of this research. The participants
(the children) will be informed about the aim and objective of the research, the ethical and
legal considerations, the possibility of risk associated with the research and the implications
of the research before the consent is taken. If the participants are deemed incompetent to
provide consent to the research, the parents of the children will be explained about the
research implications and the parents can provide the informed consent as required. The
participants will be informed that all of their data that is collected will be store safely and
will be dealt with confidentiality. The participants will also be explained about the
possibility of breach of confidentiality when the data will be analyzed by the researcher in
collaboration with other experts like psychologist and mental health professionals (Silverio
et al., 2021). Participation harm will be identified, for example, the chances of the children’s
stress, anxiety and fear of the perpetrator being revoked, the flashbacks of abuse, the trigger
of PTSD symptoms and this risks will be managed adequately using emotional buffer as and
when necessary (Sawrikar & Katz, 2017).
If possible, 15 males and 15 female samples will be selected based on the self-report or
parental report of an event of sexual abuse that occurred within the last one year. The
children with the report of sexual abuse will be chosen based on a screening test using the
Child Sexual Assault Victim Credibility Scale (CSAVCS). If the score on this scale is above the
cut-off, the children will be selected for the research. Purposive sampling, as discussed

4. above will be used in the selection of samples.
The sample size is kept at 30 as this is a pilot study and the sample size is large enough but
not too large to render unmanageable. This sample size is perfect for the research. The
comparison group will be between males and females. The comparison groups each will
contain 15 samples. Even if the groups are not ideally equal, there will be no issues, as the
number of samples will not influence the research outcome in this case.
Procedures
The data will be collected using standardized psychological and victimization scales and
through interviews. The data will be collected through interview using the questionnaire.
The following questionnaires will be used:
Child Sexual Assault Victim Credibility Scale (CSAVCS) – This test will be used to verify the
credibility of the sexual abuse faced by the children (Voogt, Klettke & Mohebbi, 2021).
Juvenile victimization questionnaire (JVQ) – The subscale of sexual abuse in this particular
JVQ scale will be used for measuring the experience of sexual abuse in children (Almeida et
al., 2020).
Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory (CASI) - assesses a range of behaviors related to
common emotional and behavior disorders identified in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) (Mpango et al., 2020).
Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS-2) – This scale will measure the five major
areas like the Interpersonal Strength, Family Involvement, Intrapersonal Strength, School
Functioning, and Affective Strength of the children to quantify their behavioural and
emotional health (Lambert et al., 2019).
The data collection method is by using standardized psychological tools, which have
established reliability and consistency. Therefore, this method of use of standardized
questionnaire for eliciting data can be scientifically valid. However, in the case of
interviews, there are high chances of subjective biases and reporting errors. The
experiences of the sexual abuse can be fragmented giving rise to inconsistent data.
Ethical Considerations In This Research
There are four key ethical dilemmas in the field of research with child sexual abuse:
The research might have an additional impact on the child. This could be considered as
another confounding factor as this will hamper the interview of the children (Dayal et al.,
2018).
The extent of information related to the research that can provide by the researcher to the
parents and the child. The researcher has to provide complete information about the

5. research methods and objectives. There might be information about the research, which can
be in conflict with the interest of the child and the parents.
The child often does not possess the competence to provide consent to the research based
on adequate information related to the risks and implications of the study. The child’s
parents or guardians are provided the authority to consent to the study on behalf of the
child.
The need to weigh the consequences of maintaining confidentiality versus the protection of
the child. In several cases, there can be a requirement of breach of confidentiality where the
child’s protection is to be prioritized. This occurs mainly when the perpetrator is living
within the immediate physical space of the child.
Measures
The key concepts that will be measured in this research are:
Child sexual abuse – CSA refers to any intentional sexual exploitation by an adult
perpetrator, of a child who is not of the age to engage in consensual sex (Finkelhor, 2019).
Psychological health and wellbeing – This refers to the quality of life, resilience, optimism,
affective strength, emotional stability, etc., which are essential for a healthy psyche.
The dependent variable in the research is psychological health and wellbeing. On the other
hand, the independent variable is the child sexual abuse experience. Child Sexual Assault
Victim Credibility Scale (CSAVCS) and Juvenile victimization questionnaire (JVQ) will
measure the child sexual abuse experience. The psychological health and wellbeing of the
children will be measured by using the Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory (CASI) and
Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS-2) scales.
Plan Of Analysis
By establishing or by exploring the possibility of a correlation between the independent and
dependent variables, it will be possible to understand if there is any existent relationship
between the child sexual abuse experience and the psychological health and wellbeing of
the children. The different subscales of the scales used to measure the health and wellbeing
of the children will be linked to the CSA experience to determine if there exists a statistically
significant relationship between the both or not.
Conclusion
Some of the major limitations of the study are the sample size, the sampling technique used,
the ethical and legal dilemmas and the lack of controlling measures of the extraneous
variables. The sample size is very small as it is only 30. This is because it is not easy to
gather samples of children with CSA experiences. Non-probability sampling technique will
be used which can cause researcher biases. The ethical and legal dilemma of confidentiality
versus child protection is another drawback. There can also be ethical issues related to

6. informed consent. There are no evidence-based, well-established extraneous variables
controlling measures that can successfully control the impact of these extraneous variables
on the unadulterated relationship between the independent and dependent variables.
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