Survey of the prevalence of sexual abuse in college students and its correlation with self-esteem

• Grant number: 13/23104-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2014
• End date: January 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Rachel de Faria Brino
• Grantee: Maria Eduarda Sampaio Ferraz Ribeiro
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

To estimate the prevalence of sexual abuse on the country is an important step to help the discrimination of all types of sexual abuse suffered by the population and correlate then with diversified factors with the goal of identifying better interventions and amenize or even avoid the occurrence of phenomenon. Even thought it's possible to find international researches that estimate the prevalence of sexual abuses in the world, in Brazil it is still a unknown field. The data provided by this project will later be used to feed ANPEEP's national database. Besides, a correlation between the prevalence of sexual abuse and the self-esteem patterns presented by the victims and non-victims will be done. Therefore, this research aims to survey the prevalence of sexual abuse within college students, collecting data to the national database, as well as compare the prevalence data with the performance on the auto-esteem scale between victims and non-victims of sexual abuse. Two questionnaires will be given to 300 students, which will answer anonymously. One of the questionnaires is the 'Prevalence of Sexual Abuse in Brazil Questionnarie' and the other is the 'Self-Esteem Scale', proposed by Rosemberg (1979). Subsequently, a date will be agreed with the students, when they will return the answers to the researcher. As a result, it is expected that the prevalence of sexual abuse ranges between 10-20%; additionally, it is expected that within the the group of participants identified as victims, the performance in the scale is below average in contrast with the ones presented by the non-victims group. (AU)