A Study to Assess the Knowledge on Child Sexual Abuse among 11 To 15 Years Old Students in Selected School at Coimbatore

Child sexual abuse, also called child molestation, is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include engaging in sexual activities with a child (whether by asking or pressuring, or by other means), indecent exposure (of the genitals, female nipples, etc. ), child grooming, child sexual exploitation or using a child to produce child pornography. The objective of this study are to assess the knowledge on child sexual abuse among 11 to 15 year students in selected school at Coimbatore and to associate the knowledge level on child sexual abuse with the socio demographic variables. The conceptual frame work of the present study was developed using the concepts from ground general systems theory (Von Ludwing Bertalamffy 1956). A descriptive study was used to find the knowledge level of 11 to 15 year students. The present study was conducted in Ravel Matriculation School, Seerapalayam, and Coimbatore.50 students (11 to 15 year) were selected for this study. Non-probability convenient sampling was used. Socio Demographic data and knowledge questionnaire on child sexual abuse was used to collect the data. The final format of the structured questionnaire comprises of two parts. Part I consists of items describing the demographic variables of the sample like gender, religion, family income per month, mother and fathers education, mother and fathers occupation, family type, area of residency, mode of transport to school and mode of information on child sexual abuse. Part II consists of 30 items with multiple choices. The minimum mark 0 and maximum 30. The pilot study was conducted on 6 samples. The reliability of the tool was computed by using split half technique. The reliability co-efficient found to be 0.82 and validity coefficient worked out to be 0.97 revealing that the tool is feasible for conducting the main study. The result shows that maximum 48 % of 11 to 15-year school students in selected school at Coimbatore were having poor knowledge on child sexual abuse, 30 % students were having average knowledge and the remaining 22 % were having good knowledge on child sexual abuse. The chi square explains that there is a significant association between socio demographic variables such as mothers education, fathers education and the mode of information on child sexual abuse as the chi-square value at 0.05 is higher than the tabulated value. Therefore, the H1 is accepted