CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE AND ADULT SEXUAL REVICTIMIZATION

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.. course as sexual assault. Additionally, behaviorally phrased questions may more accurately assessactual victimization, as opposed to questions that in, clude labels or legal terms. Studies under review varied in terms of the spe, cific definitions used. This is especially important when considering that women may not identify or label their experiences as rape even though they meet the legaldefinition of rape (e.g.,Layman, Gidycz,& Lynn, 1996).Thus, studies using labels such as rape or sexual assault may have underestimated true prevalence of child and adult incidents of rape, molestation, or attempted sexual assault. Some studies required that the assault incidents include force or threat of force as a necessary element to be included as assault, whereas others did not specify the element of force. Additionally, some studies in, cluded information about assault characteristics such as relationship to the perpetrator or reactions to victimization that might mediate associations between CSA and ASA (e.g.,psychologicaldistress,mental health outcomes noted above), whereas other studies did not. Finally, design characteristics also differedacrossstudies. Longitudinal designs have advantages over cross, sectional designs because they allow for the examination of the temporal relationships among variables, whereas probability samples are more repre, sentative of women in the general population, resulting in better generalizability of findings. SELECTION CRITERIA FOR LITERATURE REVIEW Studies have examined relationships between sexual victimization ex, periences occurring within (e.g., childhood) and between (e.g., childhood and adulthood) developmental periods, and with various formsof repeat vic, timization, including physical assault and psychologicalmaltreatment. In the present review, however, we have restricted our focusto studies pertaining to the association between CSA and ASA. We have chosen to restrict our dis, cussion to CSA as a predictor of ASA because the preponderance of extant studies have focused on this form of revictimization. In addition, for the purpose of the review, we selected studies that were conducted with collegeor community samples.Thus, we didnot reviewstudies that involved clinical samples because findings from clinical samples may not generalizeto women in the general population. We also selected studies that included relatively large, representative samples.We incorporated stud, ies that used behaviorally defined methods for assessinga history of interper, sonal violence. Finally, it should be noted that the present review focuseson women and istherefore only generalizableto women. We have not addressed the phenomenon of sexual revictimization among boys and men. Research has indicated that the preponderance of sexual assaults in adulthood occurs to women (Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000) and the majority of studies address, ing sexual revictimization have been conducted on women participants. 52 RICH ET AL.
Therefore, data on the prevalence rates or possible mediating factors that may be specific to sexual revictimization among men are lacking. Because the factors associated with the sexual assault of men in adulthood may be different from those of women, it isnot clear whether findings that pertain to populations of women are generalizableto men. Probability Studies REVIEWED SAMPLES We identified three studies that used a sophisticated research design to obtain large nationally representative samples (Kilpatrick et a1., 1997; Koss & Dinero, 1989; Tjaden & Thoennes, 2000). One study used a sampling procedure that surveyed a representative sample of college students in the United States, and the others used random-digit dialing methods to recruit and interview a representative sample of adults in the United States. The first study, conducted by Koss and Dinero (1989), inyestigated the incidence of sexual assault among college women and examined a number of proposed mediating variables associated with interpersonal victimization. The researchers used enrollment data for all U.S. colleges and sorted the colleges into geographical regions by proximity to metropolitan areas, ethnic enrollment, type of institutions, and size of the student population. Of the 92 schools that were contacted, 32 agreed to participate, resulting in a total of 3,187 college women who completed the study. Anonymous questionnaires were administered that assessed sexual victimization experiences and three sets of potential mediating variables: (a) potential vulnerability-creating traumatic experiences (e.g., divorce, physical abuse, domestic violence), (b) social-psychological characteristics (e.g., personality traits and attitudes), and (c) vulnerability-enhancing situation variables (e.g., alcohol use, number of sexual partners). CSA was defined as experiences ranging from exhibitionism to rape that occurred before the age of 14 (Finkelhor, 1979). ASA included experiences ranging from sexual contact to rape that occurred after the age of 14 (Koss & Oros, 1982). Findings indicated a significant relationship between CSA and ASA. Specifically, 66% of the adult rape victims had a history of CSA, compared with only 20% of the women with no history of adult victimization. Therefore, adult victims were over three times more likely to have a history of CSA compared with adult nonvictims. Analyses did not include an examination of differences based on racial or ethnic differences. Several variables were found to effectively differentiate rape victims and nonvictims, including CSA, sexual attitudes, level of sexual activity, and alcohol use. Strengths of this study included a large representative sample of college women and the exploration of a large number of predictor variables that CHIW SEXUAL ABUSE AND ADULT SEXUAL REVICTIMIZATION 53
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Page 3: Vt TABLE 2.1 Assault Characteristic
Page 7 and 8: symptom measures.A limitation of th
Page 9 and 10: thermore, women who were victimized
Page 11 and 12: experiences included events that oc
Page 13 and 14: A limitation of this study was that
Page 15 and 16: ered from Caucasian women. Given th
Page 17 and 18: to differbetween White and Blackwom
Page 19 and 20: Calhoun, K. S., Gidycz, C. A., Loh,

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