Exposure to childhood sexual and physical abuse and subsequent educational achievement outcomes☆
Introduction
Over the last three decades there has been a growing amount of research into the prevalence, correlates, causes, and consequences of child maltreatment. One aspect of this research has focused on the extent to which exposure to maltreatment in childhood has both short- and long-term consequences for personal adjustment (Cicchetti & Toth, 2005; Fundudis, Kaplan, & Dickinson, 2003; Mullen, King, & Tonge, 2000). One outcome that has been examined is poorer school performance and educational achievement (for reviews see Daignault & Hebert, 2004; Holmes, Offen, & Waller, 1997; Kendall-Tackett, Williams, & Finkelhor, 1993; Veltman & Browne, 2001).
Studies of the relationship between exposure to childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and educational outcomes have demonstrated consistent effects of CSA exposure across a range of educational outcomes, including test and school performance and levels of achievement. For example, Chandy and colleagues (Chandy et al., 1996, Chandy et al., 1997) found that both male and female adolescents who had been exposed to CSA demonstrated poorer school performance. Similarly, Lisak and Luster (1994) reported that adult males who had been exposed to CSA as children reported significantly greater difficulties in educational pursuits at all levels than non-abused men. Further, Einbender and Friedrich (1989) found that pre-adolescent and adolescent girls who had been exposed to CSA demonstrated lower levels of cognitive ability and poorer grades in school than a matched control group of non-abused girls. The evidence also suggests that these effects may persist after the maltreatment takes place; for example, Frothingham and colleagues (Frothingham et al., 2000) found that children exposed to CSA had significantly more educational problems than children in a matched comparison group during an 8-year period following the diagnosis of sexual abuse exposure in early childhood.
An important issue in the study of the effects of child maltreatment is the fact that children who are exposed to sexual abuse are often exposed to physical abuse as well (Dong et al., 2004, MacMillan et al., 1997). Parallel to the findings on CSA, studies investigating the association between exposure to childhood physical abuse (CPA) and educational outcomes have demonstrated effects of CPA exposure across a similar range of outcomes as in CSA exposure. For example, Perez and Widom (1994), found that children who had been physically abused had lower IQ and reading ability scores as adults, and had completed fewer years of schooling than individuals in the matched control group. Similarly, Eckenrode and colleagues (Eckenrode, Laird, & Doris, 1993) found that maltreated children (including children who were physically abused) performed more poorly than children in a matched control group on school grades and standardized tests, and were more likely to repeat a year of schooling. Also, Wodarski and colleagues (Wodarski, Kurtz, Gaudin, & Howing, 1990) reported that abused children had a greater incidence of problems with school than children in a matched control group.
In general, existing studies of CSA and CPA exposure and educational outcomes suffer from three limitations, including: (a) the use of selected samples and specialized populations, including clinical samples (Chandy et al., 1996, Chandy et al., 1997, Eckenrode et al., 1993; Einbender & Friedrich, 1989; Frothingham et al., 2000; Perez & Widom, 1994; Wodarski et al., 1990); (b) the use of cross-sectional designs in which measures of exposure to abuse and educational outcomes were obtained retrospectively (Chandy et al., 1996, Chandy et al., 1997, Eckenrode et al., 1993; Einbender & Friedrich, 1989; Lisak & Luster, 1994; Wodarski et al., 1990); and (c) a lack of control for a wide range of measures of social, family, and individual factors that may be correlated with exposure to abuse and also contribute to later adverse educational outcomes (Eckenrode et al., 1993; Einbender & Friedrich, 1989; Lisak & Luster, 1994; Wodarski et al., 1990). The best research design to examine these issues is a longitudinal design in which prospectively assessed measures of child maltreatment are related to subsequent achievement, taking into account social, family, and related factors. However, because of ethical difficulties, this design is often not possible. An alternative to this approach is the “semi-prospective design” in which outcomes and covariates are assessed longitudinally, whereas exposure to abuse is assessed retrospectively (Fergusson & Mullen, 1999).
In this study we report the results of a semi-prospective study of the linkages between exposure to child maltreatment and subsequent educational achievement taking into account social, family, and childhood factors. The aims of this research were:
- 1.
To examine the relationship between retrospective reports of exposure to CSA and CPA prior to age 16 on subsequent educational outcomes over the period from 16 to 25 years.
- 2.
To control linkages between abuse exposure and educational outcomes for a series of confounding factors. These factors included socio-economic, family, and individual factors that were related to abuse exposure.
Section snippets
Method
The data were gathered as part of the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS), a longitudinal study of a birth cohort of 1,265 children born in the Christchurch (New Zealand) urban region in mid-1977. The cohort has been studied at birth, 4 months, 1 year and at annual intervals to age 16 years, and again at ages 18, 21, and 25 (Fergusson & Horwood, 2001; Fergusson, Horwood, Shannon, & Lawton, 1989). The study has collected information from a variety of sources including: parental
Associations between exposure to child maltreatment and later educational achievement outcomes
Table 1, Table 2 show the associations between the extent of exposure to CSA (Table 1), the extent of exposure to CPA (Table 2), and subsequent educational achievement. For each comparison the tables report tests of linear association using the Mantel-Haenszel χ2 test for linear trend. The tables show that in all cases increasing exposure to CSA and CPA was associated with significant (p < .05) tendencies for decreasing educational achievement at secondary school and university.
Associations between CSA, CPA, and socio-economic, family functioning, and individual factors
The results in
Discussion
The present study attempted to address a range of limitations in the existing research on exposure to childhood sexual and physical abuse and later educational outcomes. These analyses led to the following general conclusions.
First, there were pervasive bivariate associations between exposure to CSA and CPA and a range of educational outcomes spanning high school and university achievement. For all outcomes there were clear and linear trends for increasing severity of both CSA and CPA exposure
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This research was funded by grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the National Child Health Research Foundation, the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, and the New Zealand Lottery Grants Board.