Childhood Sexual Abuse Scale (Aalsma et al., 2002)

• Populations: Adolescents and Young Adults
• Age ranges: 14-24
• Languages: English
• Countries: United States

Items

Item Stem:

These next questions are about activity before you were 12 years old.

• Someone tried to touch me in a sexual way against my will. 
• Someone tried to make me touch them in a sexual way against my will. 
• I believe that I have been sexually abused by someone. 
• Someone threatened to tell lies about me or hurt me unless I did something sexual with them. 

Responses

Items used a binary, Yes / No answer format

Scoring

“The total score for this scale is calculated by summing across items and can range from 0 to 4., with yes answers being 1, no answers coded as 0” (Aalsma & Fortenberry, 2020)

“The CSA scale was used in two ways. First, total scale
scores were calculated by summing across items, such that
a score of 0 indicated no abuse items had been endorsed
and a score of 4 indicated that all items had been endorsed.
Next, CSA was treated as a dichotomous variable, in
which the first group was defined as those who endorsed a
single item on the CSA scale and the second group was
defined as those who endorsed two to four items on the
CSA scale. The CSA scale was used in this manner to
examine the utility of using a single-item measure of CSA
versus a multiple-item scale.”

Citations

• Aalsma, M. C., Fortenberry, J. D. (2020). Childhood Sexual Abuse Scale. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (1-2). Routledge.
• Aalsma, M. C., Zimet, G. D., Fortenberry, J. D., Blythe, M., & Orr, D. P. (2002). Reports of childhood sexual abuse by adolescents and young adults: Stability over time. The Journal of Sex Research, 39(4), 259-263. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490209552149