Original articleSexual Abuse in Childhood and Adolescence and the Risk of Early Pregnancy Among Women Ages 18–22
Section snippets
Sample
A total of 2,003 women aged 18–22 years (mean = 19.9, SD = 1.5) were recruited from 44 urban (64.2% of sample) and rural (35.9%) sites. Purposive sampling was used to identify recruitment sites whose populations primarily included women aged 18–22 years and that would ensure socioeconomic, ethnic, and regional diversity of the study sample. Sites included health and family planning clinics (41% of sample), universities, community colleges and vocational schools (44.6%), social service agencies
Results
Table 1 presents sociodemographic and behavioral characteristics in the sample by the following groups: no sexual abuse (30.5%), childhood sexual abuse only (11.3%), adolescent sexual abuse only (39.8%), and both childhood and adolescent sexual abuse (18.5%). Among women who experienced sexual abuse in childhood, 62.8% and 25.7% reported that molestation and rape, respectively, were the most severe types of abuse experienced. Among women who experienced sexual abuse in adolescence, 32.6%,
Discussion
Results from this large multiethnic sample of urban and rural young women confirm previous research that a history of sexual abuse is associated with pregnancy risk during adolescence. In addition, our study showed that risk of pregnancy varied depending on whether sexual abuse occurred in childhood, adolescence, or both, and the most severe type of sexual abuse experienced during these three periods. Findings also illustrated that the prevalence of the most severe type of sexual abuse differed
Acknowledgments
This research was made possible by funding from Arizona Disease Control Research Commission and Arizona State University's Investigator Incentive Award. The authors acknowledge Mark Roosa for providing the secondary data for this study.
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