Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

First Advisor

Anne DePrince

Second Advisor

Sarah Watamura

Third Advisor

Michelle Rozenman

Fourth Advisor

Julia Dmitrieva

Fifth Advisor

Frédérique Chevillot

Keywords

Child abuse, Latent class analysis, Revictimization

Abstract

Child abuse (CA) puts women at risk for later victimization by a different perpetrator, referred to as revictimization (RV); however, how this risk is conveyed is not well understood. CA is associated with a diverse set of negative sequelae (e.g., posttraumatic symptomology, emotion regulation difficulties), many of which could plausibly affect risk for RV. To date, most empirical studies of RV have mainly compared groups of women with and without abuse and RV histories using variablecentered approaches. This approach has led to a focus on differences between abused and non-abused women on a few CA-related variables tested at a time. Less attention has been given to the heterogeneity among women with histories of abuse, limiting the field’s ability to advance theory and identify mechanisms to target in interventions. Further, correlates have rarely been tested in relation to how women respond to risky situations (e.g., Messman-Moore & Brown, 2006), which is believed to contribute to RV risk (e.g., Marx et al., 2001). Given gaps in the literature, this project pursued three aims over two studies. The first aim was to replicate findings from the literature that women with and without abuse histories differed in their experience of negative CA-related variables. The second aim sought to identify unique groups of college women characterized by negative CA sequelae using person-centered analyses (latent class analysis, LCA). The CA variables tested have been identified in the empirical literature, but not previously studied simultaneously. The third and final aim was to develop a new and interactive risk recognition task that was also able to ethically assess response to risk. Findings from these two studies suggest that women with similar abuse histories experience negative CA sequelae differently, which could have important implications for the development of RV theory. Moreover results from the chat room task suggest that women’s response to risk is more nuanced than simply a deficit in risk detection, which could inform the development of more efficacious interventions.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Julie M. Olomi

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

108 pgs

Discipline

Psychology

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