Efficacy of a Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program for Turkish Second-Grade Primary School Children

Year 2026, Volume: 41 Issue: 1, 236 - 249, 23.01.2026

Türkan Yılmaz Irmak , Rukiye Kızıltepe , Duygu Eslek Çetin , Duygu Güngör Culha , Cerem Sancaklı , Özge Koçak , Özge Kaya , Dilan Manap Koçak , Gülsüm Yörük Ülker

https://doi.org/10.16986/hunefd.1754316

Abstract

School-based prevention programs may play a crucial role in protecting children against child sexual abuse. However, only a few prevention programs have been implemented for primary school children in Türkiye so far. Ultimately, we aimed to develop a child sexual abuse prevention program and explore its efficacy using a pretest-posttest comparison group design. We carried out the study with 104 second graders aged 6-8 years (Mage = 6.99, SD = 0.49). Using a quasi-experimental design with comparison group, children’s classrooms were randomly assigned to either the intervention group (n = 66) or the wait-list comparison group (n = 38). All the children were recruited to a pretest and a posttest using the Child Sexual Abuse Knowledge Form, the Self-Protection Skill Form, and the Good Touch-Bad Touch Test. The students in the intervention group participated in the 4-hour child sexual abuse prevention program. To investigate effectiveness of the program on children’s knowledge levels, we used the three-state latent Markov model with (SABIC = 2067.7511, AIC = 2091.4234) and without (SABIC = 2075.4711, AIC = 2095.0264) intervention and wait-list comparison groups as a covariate variable. This result implied that the program was effective for the children in the intervention group since the transition probabilities between the intervention and wait-list comparison groups were significantly different. The findings revealed that the children in the intervention group demonstrated significant improvements in knowledge. Their self-protection skills (number of responses, effective strategies, diversity of response) also showed significant improvements. (respectively (F(1, 101)= 4.280, p <.05, η2= .04, F(1, 101)= 4.539, p <.05, η2= .04, F(1, 101)= 10.029, p <.05, η2= .09). Hence, we can confidently highlight the importance of the prevention program for second graders, and the child sexual abuse prevention program can be utilized as a primary prevention program in Turkish primary schools.

Keywords

Child sexual abuse , prevention , school-based program , primary school

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