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 9049 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 8 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.