Several recent studies on child sexual abuse (CSA) in Chinese society have shown that the problem is not uncommon, and is associated with poor mental health and health-related risk behaviors of abused youth. It is very important to understand and improve public awareness of CSA prevention, especially for the parents. However, there are few published reports on the problem of parents' awareness. To fill this gap, knowledge, attitudes and practice of CSA prevention education were explored in 385 parents of Grade 3 pupils from four schools in Fuxin City of Liaoning Province in the northeast part of China by self-administered anonymous questionnaires. Among this sample, more than 80% of parents approved of school CSA prevention education. However, at the same time, 47.3% of parents expressed some concern that this education may induce the children to learn too much about ‘sex’. Overall, about 60% of parents had told their children that their ‘private parts’ should not be touched by others and discussed strategies of ‘Say “No!”, Leave and Tell’ in dealing with CSA situations or the situations that may lead to CSA. Only 4.2% of parents had provided books or other material about CSA prevention for their children. The parents' CSA prevention knowledge was inadequate. The findings from this research will be useful in developing CSA prevention education programs in schools and communities, designed to improve parents' knowledge and practice of CSA prevention.

The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of a sexual abuse prevention education in a sample of Chinese preschool children in Beijing, China. One hundred and fifty preschool children were randomly assigned to either the intervention group (N = 78) or the wait-list control group (N = 72). Children were posttested on sexual abuse prevention knowledge and self-protection skills gains. Following program participation, preschool children in the intervention group demonstrated greater knowledge about sexual abuse prevention and higher levels of self-protection skills compared with children in the wait-list control group. Findings suggest that it is feasible to implement the sexual abuse prevention education with Chinese preschoolers. Applications and limitations of these findings are discussed.

The aim of this present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention curriculum toward children and to compare the knowledge gains between children who were taught by teachers and their parents. Four hundred and eighty-four school-age children recruited from one primary school in Beijing, China, were randomly assigned to a CSA prevention program administered by teachers or their parents or to a wait-list control group. The findings reveal that children in the teacher education group demonstrated the highest level of CSA prevention knowledge and skills, followed by the parent education group, while children in the control group showed the least improvements. The knowledge and skills gains were retained at a 12-week follow-up. The present study shows that Chinese school-age children can benefit from CSA prevention program with increased knowledge and skills of personal safety. School-based CSA prevention education should be improved and implemented in other regions of China.

This study aimed to examine the knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of child sexual abuse (CSA) prevention among parents of children with hearing loss. The study involved 127 pairs of parents with deaf and hard of hearing children from three special education schools in Beijing and Hebei province, China. The findings revealed that the parents lacked knowledge about CSA prevention, such as the character of perpetrators and child victims. Parents were supportive about potential CSA prevention education in schools. Most parents told children much about personal safety, but topics on CSA prevention were still insufficient. The study also found that education level was significantly associated with knowledge and attitude. Elder parents knew more and talked more about CSA prevention. Mothers and girls’ parents were more willing to communicate with children about CSA prevention. The conclusion of the study was that parents appeared to have gained a positive attitude, but poor knowledge and practice. Their knowledge and skills of effective communication should be strengthened to promote CSA prevention practice.

This study explored the prevalence of peer physical aggression (PPA) and its association with aggressive beliefs, empathy, self-control, and cooperation skills among 1,719 7th-to-9th-grade students in a rural town in the central China province of Henan. The data were collected by the self-administered questionnaire anonymously. Results showed that 17.9% of the students reported that they had one or more times of physical aggressive behaviors toward their peers in the past 12 months. The reported rate of PPA was significantly higher in boys (24.7%) than in girls (10.7%). After adjusting the factors of gender and grade, result of logistic regression analysis showed that having a higher level of aggressive beliefs was PPA risk factor; a higher level of self-control was protective factor, but there were no significant association between PPA and the factors of empathy and cooperation skills. These results indicated that helping students to decrease their aggressive beliefs and to improve their self-control skill would aid in the prevention of youth violence.