Investigation of Teachers’ Attitudes toward Reporting Child Sexual Abuse According to Gender Roles

The purpose of this research is to examine attitudes of teachers towards reporting child sexual abuse according to gender roles, gender, level of information about signs of child sexual abuse and first reaction to a suspected child sexual abuse. The research group is formed of 281 female, 211 male, in total 492 voluntary teachers working in state schools in 2015-2016 academic year in Mersin central towns. In the study; “Attitudes towards Reporting Child Sexual Abuse Scale (ATRCSAS)", "Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI)" and "Personal Information Form" are used. Pearson moments correlation coefficient, multiple regression analysis, Mann-Whitney-U and Kruskal-Wallis-H tests are used in analysis of data. As a result of statistical analysis obtained from research it was observed that attitudes towards reporting sexual abuse were related with gender roles in negative and low level. At the end of regression analysis conducted to determine contribution in predicting attitudes towards reporting sexual abuse of gender roles it was observed that the most important contribution comes from the masculine gender role. It was observed in research that attitude points for reporting of sexual abuse didn’t demonstrate a statistically significant difference by gender and it showed significant difference according to having information about the signs of sexual abuse, first reaction to a suspected sexual abuse.