Teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse: problems with existing research leading to new scale development.
This paper details a systematic literature review identifying problems in extant research relating to teachers' attitudes toward reporting child sexual abuse and offers a model for new attitude scale development and testing. Scale development comprised a five-phase process grounded in contemporary attitude theories, including (a) developing the initial item pool, (b) conducting a panel review, (c) refining the scale via an expert focus group, (d) building content validity through cognitive interviews, and (e) assessing internal consistency via field testing. The resulting 21-item scale displayed construct validity in preliminary testing. The scale may prove useful as a research tool, given the theoretical supposition that attitudes may be changed with time, context, experience, and education. Further investigation with a larger sample is warranted.
School of Early Childhood, Queensland University of Technology, Victoria Park Road, Kelvin Grove, Queensland 4059, Australia. k.walsh@qut.edu.au
Kerryann
K
Walsh
Mehdi
M
Rassafiani
Ben
B
Mathews
Ann
A
Farrell
Des
D
Butler
D000328:Adult; D001290:Attitude; D001315:Australia; D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000523:psychology*; D005178:Faculty; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019221:Mandatory Reporting; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires