School-based child sexual abuse interventions: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose: The purposes of this systematic review were to systematically summarize components in existing school-based child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention programs and identify predictors for program effectiveness.

Method: Building upon the most comprehensive systematic review on this topic, we conducted systematic searches in both English-language from September 2014 to October 2020 and Chinese-language from inception to October, 2020. Meta-regressions were performed to identify predictors for program effectiveness.

Results: Thirty-one studies were included with a total sample size of 9,049 participants. Results from meta-analyses suggested that interventions are effective in increasing participants’ CSA knowledge as assessed via questionnaires (g = 0.72, 95% CI [0.52-0.93]) and vignette-based measures (g = 0.55, 95% CI [0.35-0.74]). Results from meta-regression suggested that interventions with more than three sessions are more effective than interventions with fewer sessions. Interventions appear to be more effective with children who are eight years and older than younger children.

Discussion: CSA is a global issue that has significant negative effects on victims’ physical, psychological, and sexual well-being. Our findings also provide recommendations for future research, particularly in terms of optimizing the effectiveness of school-based CSA prevention programs, and the better reporting of intervention components as well as participant characteristics.