A normative sample of 1,114 children was contrasted with a sample of 620 sexually abused children and 577 psychiatric outpatients on the Child Sexual Behavior Inventory (CSBI), a 38-item behavior checklist assessing sexual behavior in children 2 to 12 years old. The CSBI total score and each individual item differed significantly between the three groups after controlling for age, sex, maternal education, and family income. Sexually abused children exhibited a greater frequency of sexual behaviors than either the normative or psychiatric outpatient samples. Test-retest reliability and interitem correlation were satisfactory. Sexual behavior problems were related to other generic behavior problems. This contributed to the reduced discrimination between psychiatric outpatients and sexually abused children when compared to the normative/sexually abused discrimination.

for the 1990s) as suicidology literature burgeons. He claims this fourth edition, covering publications from the years 1990 to 1997, will be his last. Lester's book reads like a compilation of shoebox index cards. The table of contents for a 384-page book is 19 pages alone, with 26 chapters and myriad subheadings on topics as diverse as 'the inheritance of suicidal inclinations', 'suicidal behavior in lower animals', 'meteorological correlates of suicide', and 'sociological correlates'. Suicide in Zimbabwe? Check out page 107. Hoax notes and suicide? Turn to page 238. Suicide and psoriasis? You'll find that reference summarized on page 307. Factoid after suicidal factoid is presented, unintegrated with other factoids, devoid of any judgment from the author about whether the reported data is worth the paper it was printed on. It's hard not to admire the indefatigable industry of Lester, who has written dozens of the articles he cites. But it's also difficult not to find at least a little risibility in the ticking off of hundreds of descriptors, many buttressed with sociological jargon, ultimately adding up to nothing much. Lester provides brief summaries (a paragraph or two) at the end of each chapter, but these mostly take the form of noting the limitations of research on each topic. As I scan this substantial-appearing but ultimately anemic book, I can recommend it only as a resource text for a researcher getting started on finding articles in a particular suicidology subcategory. As a compilation and slightly annotated bibliography, Lester's text represents a Herculean, ultimately futile effort to catalogue every pebble on the expanding waterfront of suicidology studies. But it by no means rises to the challenge of shedding light on its titular question of why people kill themselves.

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