Optimus Study: South Africa

Ref. 12477

Methods

Method description

In the population study, two separate surveys were carried out, one in schools and the other in households. This was done to ensure that the views of 15-17 year old adolescents who were not attending school at the time of the study were also captured in the study. For the household survey, to obtain a nationally representative sample of the population, a multistage stratified sample was designed with province, geographic area (urban/rural) and race group being used as explicit stratification variables. The participating schools were clustered according to the enumerator areas identified in the household survey component of the population study. In both schools and households, the main questionnaire was administered by an interviewer. The study was designed to assess a) the prevalence and incidence of child sexual abuse - in the context of other forms of maltreatment; b) the consequences of maltreatment; and c) the risk and protective factors for maltreatment. In designing the questionnaire, the study drew on the Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ; Finkelhor, Hamby, Ormrod, & Turner, 2005) as well as the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC; Briere, 2001) to estimate the prevalence and incidence of child sexual abuse and to assess the chief mental health consequences (anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms). The questionnaire also assessed other consequences of abuse namely educational problems (failing or doing poorly at school, and dropping out of school) and sexual problems (sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, and engaging in risky sexual behaviour. The risk factors that were measured included sleeping density, family and household structure, frequent violence in the home, harsh parenting, parental psychiatric hospitalisation, parental substance misuse and child disability. In addition to the main interviewer-administered questionniare, each respondent was also asked to self complete a short one-page version of the questionnaire that allowed them to respond to the questions covering the main forms of maltreatment more privately.

Method (instruments)

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