The Role of Family Functions as the Predictors of Childhood Abuse Experiences among Adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the family’s functions as the predictor of physical, emotional and sexual childhood abuse of adolescents. In this context, the Family Assessment Device (FAD) and Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) were conducted with 324 adolescents (173 male/ 151 female) studying in public high schools. The findings show that there is a positive correlation between physical abuse, emotional abuse-neglect and sexual abuse dimensions of CTQ and all the dimensions of FAD. As a result of the logistic regression analysis the model including all the variables was significantly better at predicting the separation of adolescents’ childhood abuse experiences than the initial model. The model including all the predictor variables explains 64% of physical abuse, 69% of emotional abuse and neglect 10% of sexual abuse. According to the Hosmer and Lemeshow results, model data harmony is adequate level for physical abuse and emotional abuse-neglect, but it is inadequate for sexual abuse. According to the result of Walt statistics, “affective involvement” and “general functions” contribute to the physical abuse, “communication” contributes to emotional abuse-neglect and “roles” contributes to the sexual abuse.