| The main purpose of this research was to provide a preliminary and exploratory account of group and individual treatment preferences among women who had experienced childhood sexual abuse. The theoretical view was that specific abuse sequelae would lead women who had endured particular types of abuse to prefer particular types of treatment. Hypothesis one: Women with histories of intrafamilial abuse would prefer a process group treatment; survivors of extrafamilial abuse were hypothesized as preferring an educational or didactic group treatment; survivors of both intrafamilial and extrafamilial abuse were hypothesized as preferring a psychoeducational group format. Hypothesis two was that psychometric instruments would predict subjects' preference for participation in a particular type of group. The instruments included the Novaco Provocation Inventory (NPI), the Conflict and Control subscales of the Family Environment Scale (FES), and the Symptom Checklist Revised (SCL-90-R). The third hypothesis examined, through descriptive analyses, the clinical folk wisdom that survivors who had recently come forward with their abuse histories would prefer individual psychotherapy over group treatment. Subjects ranked the three synopses of educational, process, and psychoeducational group treatment according to their preferences for each group. Descriptive analyses of survivors' opinions regarding the different forms of group treatment are presented.;Following the administration of a screening questionnaire to 175 female undergraduates, a group of 27 follow-up subjects was obtained. Among these follow-up subjects, 6 had histories of intrafamilial abuse, 18 had histories of extrafamilial abuse, and 3 had histories of both intrafamilial and extrafamilial abuse. While no statistically significant findings were obtained to lend formal support to the study's hypotheses, trends in the ranking and descriptive data revealed that a majority of subjects had preferences for groups with greater, delineated structure (i.e., the educational and psychoeducational formats). Subjects did not evidence a preference for individual psychotherapy over group treatment, regardless of time since first disclosure of abuse. Replication of the current study would assist in resolving treatment questions raised by qualitative trends in the data. |
