Effects of gender and age on psychologists' reporting of child sexual abuse.

Psychologists evaluated the seriousness of a child sexual abuse incident in written vignettes, and they responded as to whether or not they would report the incident to protective services personnel. Data analysis revealed a significant main effect for the child's age as well as a significant 3-way interaction among the child's age, the gender of the alleged perpetrator, and the respondent's gender. Both female and male respondents viewed a perpetrator of their own gender with a young victim of either gender as the most serious scenario. In this sample, a significantly higher percentage of female respondents claimed to have failed to report an instance of suspected sexual abuse in actual clinical practice than the male respondents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)