81 ATTACHMENT SECURITY, SELF-ESTEEM AND COPING STRATEGIES AS POTENTIAL PREDICTORS OF ANXIETY SYMPTOMS IN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is associated with high rates of psychological problems such as anxiety (Yansen et al, 2011). Yet, studies consistently highlight the diversity of outcomes of children confronted with CSA underscoring the need to identify factors influencing outcomes. One of the crucial intervening variables is related to coping strategies, with studies finding that relying on avoidant coping is associated with increased anxiety symptoms and a low self-esteem (Gauthier-Duchesne et al, 2017). In addition, some authors have proposed that parent-child attachment could act as a mediator in the relationship between CSA and internalized behavior problems in sexually abused preschoolers (Charest et al. 2018) The present study aimed to explore the contribution of attachment security to the mother, self-esteem and coping strategies to the prediction of anxiety symptoms in children victims of CSA. Children were recruited in five different settings offering services following disclosure of CSA. Anxiety symptoms were evaluated with the Revised Children’s Manifest Anxiety Scale (Reynolds & Bert, 2008), attachment security with the Kerns Security Scale (Kerns et al, 1996), self-esteem with the Self-Perception Profile for Children (Harter, 1985), and the coping strategies with the Self-Report Coping Style (Causey & Dubow, 1992). Hierarchical regression were used to test the contribution of coping strategies, attachment, and self-esteem in the prediction of anxiety symptoms. Age and gender were entered first and security attachment to the mother, self-esteem and coping strategies as a second step of the regression analysis. The sample consisted of 755 children victims of CSA (528 girls, 227 boys) aged 6 to 12 years old. 72.3% of cases involved intra-familial abuse. 59.9% of children described very severe abuse (penetration or attempted penetration) and 34.4% reported chronic abuse. Hierarchical regression showed that high attachment security to the mother (ß = -.102, p<.05), high self-esteem (ß = -.310, p<.001) and frequent reliance on approach coping (ß = -.097, p<.05) predicted lower anxiety symptoms. These variables explained 18% of the variance in anxiety scores. Approach coping strategies, combined with a secure attachment to the mother and a high self-esteem are associated with lower anxiety symptoms. This study illustrates the relative importance of helping children rely on approach coping strategies, reinforce their self-esteem and foster secure attachment to the mother.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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".