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Examining Caregiver Vigilance For Child Sexual Abuse, Kate K. Chappell

Theses and Dissertations

Child sexual abuse (CSA) affects approximately one in four US children through adolescence. As an adverse childhood experience (ACE) implicated in long-term health and wellbeing, CSA is a pervasive safety concern. The influence of caregivers and healthcare providers is under-realized in CSA prevention. Examining the thinking processes preceding CSA vigilance response has been limited in research. Understanding the complexities in healthcare related to addressing CSA will facilitate caregiver-focused intervention in primary care. Guided by social ecology and protection motivation theories (PMT), the goals of this two-phase study were to explore caregiver cognitive processes towards vigilance for CSA and the challenges …