Is child sexual abuse declining in Canada? Results fromnationally representative retrospective surveys
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: Numerous data sources suggest a decline in child sexual abuse (CSA) in the United States since the early 1990s. Some evidence also indicates that an earlier period of higher CSA incidence began following World War II. This study examines prevalence estimates of sexual abuse reported retrospectively as having occurred in childhood (ChSA) in two nationally representative surveys of the Canadian population. METHODS: Data are from 13 931 respondents aged 18 to 76 years from the 2004/2005 Canadian Gender, Alcohol, and Culture: An International Study (GENACIS), and from 22 169 household residents aged 18 years or older who participated in the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health (CCHS-MH). We present inter- and intrasurvey comparisons of ChSA prevalence specific to sex and age groups. RESULTS: Findings from both surveys suggest a decline in CSA since 1993, consistent with declines observed in the United States. Results also suggest that 1946 to 1992 was a period of higher risk of CSA, relative to the period before 1946. The evidence was more robust for women. CONCLUSION: Evidence of a decline in CSA in Canada since the early 1990s is encouraging, given the long-term debilitating effects with which it is associated. Continued monitoring is critical. The long-term negative effects associated with CSA underscore the importance of continuing to move from lower risk to zero risk.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".