Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

stronger grounds for believing that systematic and sustained instruction of defensive responses could protect
children from sexual predators.
The current study seeks to therefore determine if today’s children are able to detect a possible
threat from an inappropriate adult and to determine if strategies for resisting and reporting perpetrators are
rated differently than twenty years ago.
Methods
Participants
The researcher and researcher’s mentor approached a number of adults and asked if they were
interested in having their children, nephews, nieces, cousins, or children of friends of the family participate
in the study. These adults consisted of classmates, colleagues, family, friends and acquaintances of the
researcher and mentor. Most individuals declined or avoided participation in the study, most likely due to
the sensitive topic of the study.
Participants of this study consisted of five children. Participants were selected based on age: the
qualification of the participant was that he or she must be under the age of eleven. The younger children
consisted of a four-year-old male, a four year-old female, and a seven-year-old female. The older children
consisted of one ten-year-old male and one eleven-year-old male.
Instrumentation
The selected method of gathering data was face-to-face interviews. By interviewing the
participants, the interviewers had the opportunity to ask open-ended questions so as to gain as much
information about the recognition, resistance and reporting ability of the child participant as possible. The
researcher used a total of nine open-ended questions to obtain qualitative data. In addition to these nine
original questions, the researcher asked three supplementary questions, only if the participant had given
some indication that non-compliance is an alternative. These interview questions were in alignment with a
given vignette. The exact wording of both the vignette and the interview questions—as well as the original
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