The relationship between child sexual abuse and academic achievement in a sample of adolescent psychiatric inpatients.
OBJECTIVE
To examine the relationship between sexual abuse and academic achievement in an adolescent inpatient psychiatric population. Individual factors expected to influence this relationship were measured to explore the way they each interacted with sexual abuse and its relationship to academic achievement.


METHODS
Eighty-one adolescent psychiatric inpatients participated in the study (aged 12--18 years: M=16.0). Participants were administered tests of academic achievement (dependent variable) and intelligence, and completed a number of self-report measures of their experience of different types of maltreatment, their perception of the parenting they received, socio-economic status, substance abuse, and psychopathology.


RESULTS
Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that intelligence was the main predictor of academic achievement (uniquely explaining 26% of the variance). A number of interaction effects were also significant indicating that intelligence, substance abuse, internalizing behavior problems, externalizing behavior problems all influenced the relationship between sexual abuse and academic achievement.


CONCLUSIONS
Examining the impact of sexual abuse is complex because it is typically an experience embedded in a range of other risk factors, such as poverty, family dysfunction, and other types of maltreatment. This study demonstrated coexistence between sexual abuse and a number of other variables, including other maltreatment types and parental overprotection, underscoring the requirement for complex models of research that more accurately reflect the experience of abused children.
Buckle
Sarah K
SK
Deakin University, School of Psychology, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood 3125, Vic., Australia.
Lancaster
Sandra
S
Powell
Martine B
MB
Higgins
Daryl J
DJ
D000124:Achievement; D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007297:Inpatients / Q000523:psychology; D007360:Intelligence; D007361:Intelligence Tests; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011599:Psychopathology