School administrators are required by law to report suspected cases
of child abuse. They create serious legal and moral consequences for their
school districts when they fail to report suspicions of child abuse occurring
in the school setting. Studies consistently find that child sexual abuse is
under-reported and that allegations of sexual abuse by school personnel are
increasing. School administrators may not be responding effectively to the
abuse that does occur in schools because they have not been trained to
recognize indicators of abuse nor to effectively investigate allegations of
abuse.
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether specially
designed training would significantly improve school administrators'
performance on child sexual abuse case simulations.
Subjects were from a convenience sample of 40 practicing
administrators from five school districts in Yamhill County, Oregon. A one-group
pretest-intervention-post-test (A-B-A) design was used, and data were
collected using three instruments: (1) an administrator questionnaire
developed through a Delphi Process, (2) a pre-evaluation case simulation,
and (3) a post-evaluation case simulation. The t test of alpha was used to
examine the correlated means and determine the significance in changes in
performance between the pre- and post-test results. A standard level of
significance (p<.05) was employed throughout the study.
This study confirms that the administrators in this sample were
lacking in knowledge in the six areas addressed by the training modules and
that the gains they made were significant in each of the six training areas
and on the overall post-test. No significant differences were found among
the subjects on the basis of gender, age, experience level, and longevity in
their current positions.
This study concludes that school administrators may lack sufficient
knowledge about child sexual abuse to adequately protect children in their
schools. It also suggests that specially designed training sessions will
increase reporting and reduce the number of child sexual abuse cases
occurring in public schools. Districts may better fulfill their moral and legal
obligations to protect children and reduce their legal costs and exposure to
liability by providing specialized training in child sexual abuse for
administrators. / Graduation date: 1997
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/34459 |
| Date | 30 September 1996 |
| Creators | Just, Valva D. |
| Contributors | Merickel, Mark L. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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