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UBC Theses and Dissertations

Relationships between childhood victimization, self and world beliefs, and coping patterns in adult male undergraduates Hayes, Sean Michael

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in broadening the study of sexual abuse to include male child victims and to investigating the well-being of male adults with a history of sexual abuse. The research is however primarily descriptive. This study applied a theoretical framework to the investigation of coping patterns amongst three groups of male undergraduate students (those with a history of childhood sexual abuse, those with a history of negative events other than sexual abuse, and those with a non-victimizing history) attending a large Canadian university and a large community college. One hundred and thirty-five male respondents (M age = 22.17 years) completed a survey regarding their self-worth, assumptions about the benevolence and meaningfulness of the world, degree of gender role stress, choice of coping strategies in interpersonal stressful situations, and history of negative childhood events. Thirteen respondents reported having been sexually abused as a child (9.63% of the total), 25 respondents reported having experienced victimizing events other than sexual abuse (18.52%), and 97 respondents reported no victimizing events (71.86%). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to investigate the effect of the self and world assumptions, and gender role stress upon the relationship between victim status and the use of coping strategies in a interpersonal stressful situation. As hypothesized, there was a significant linear relationship between the schema and gender role stress scores, and the coping score, which accounted for 21% of the variance. Distortion in schematic patterns and high gender role stress distortion upon the relationship between victimization status and the use of maladaptive coping patterns, however did not arise. The findings contribute knowledge about the effect of undergraduate men's values and beliefs upon coping patterns.

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