The validity and appropriateness of methods, analyses, and conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A rebuttal of victimological critique from Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001).

Abstract

The authors respond to 2 victimological critiques of their 1998 meta-analysis on child sexual abuse (CSA). S. J. Dallam et al. (2001) claimed that B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (1998) committed numerous methodological and statistical errors, and often miscoded and misinterpreted data. The authors show all these claims to be invalid. To the contrary, they demonstrate frequent bias in Dallam et al.'s criticisms. S. J. Ondersma et al. (2001) claimed that Rind et al.'s study is part of a backlash against psychotherapists, that its suggestions regarding CSA definitions were extrascientific, and that the moral standard is needed to understand CSA scientifically. The authors show their suggestions to have been scientific and argue that it is Ondersma et al.'s issue-framing and moral standard that are extrascientific. This reply supports the original methods, analyses, recommendations, and conclusions of Rind et al.

Young Women's Social and Occupational Development and Mental Health in the Aftermath of Child Sexual Abuse

“…The effect sizes for both young women and men observed in this study were substantially larger than those typically found for the vast majority of more proximate negative life events occurring in adulthood (Aseltine and Kessler 1993;Kessler and McLeod 1984;McLeod and Kessler 1990), which range between a quarter and a third of a standard deviation. Consequently our research informs the debate over the controversial findings of Rind et al (1998) who concluded in a recent meta-analysis that the effect of CSA on young adults' adjustment is actually quite small (e.g., Dallam et al 2001;Ondersma et al 2001;Rind et al 2001). Our study is particularly relevant to this debate because we address two of the principal criticisms of Rind et al's research: that studies using college samples may include only the highest functioning youths experiencing CSA, and that the wide range of abuse definitions found in the metaanalyses have diluted calculations of the impact of traumatic sexual victimization.…”

Assessment of the Harmful Psychiatric and Behavioral Effects of Different Forms of Child Maltreatment

“…Although early literature reviews concluded that child sexual abuse predicts a range of psychiatric outcomes, 4–6 more recent meta-analyses based on community samples 7 and college samples 8 suggest that child sexual abuse is weakly associated with later adjustment problems. Unsurprisingly, these findings are controversial 9 , and have been criticized 10,11 and defended 12,13 on several occasions.…”

The Loss of the Self in Memory: Self-Referential Memory, Childhood Relational Trauma, and Dissociation

“…One of these challenges is the weak association between childhood trauma and proneness to dissociation in nonclinical populations (Merckelbach & Muris, 2001). A meta-analysis of studies of college students showed a small effect size for the association between childhood sexual abuse and proneness to dissociation (Rind, Tromovitch, & Bauserman, 1998, 2001; but also see Dallam et al, 2001; Ondersma, Chaffin, Berliner, Cordon, & Goodman, 2001). Prospective studies have reported nonsignificant correlations between child maltreatment and proneness to dissociation in early adulthood (Dutra, Bureau, Holmes, Lyubchik, & Lyons-Ruth, 2009; Ogawa, Sroufe, Weinfield, Carlson, & Egeland, 1997).…”

“… 5. It has been speculated whether child maltreatment in college samples would be less severe (e.g., Dallam et al, 2001), although there are also findings suggesting that there is no strong evidence in support of lower prevalence and severity compared with national samples (Rind et al, 2001). Using the same instrument, the average score of childhood relational trauma reported in our Taiwanese psychiatric inpatients study ( M = 1.06, SD = 1.36, range = 0–5; Chiu et al, 2015) was numerically larger than that in the current study ( M = 0.51, SD = 0.97, range = 0–4). …”