salusex

The main goal of this project is to learn about the possible erroneous attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that can develop in children, adolescents, and young adults in this group that ultimately impede a healthy affective-sexual development, or possibly lead to crimes of sexual nature. This allows us to optimise their development through the creation of programmes specifically designed to target their shortcomings and programmes of a therapeutic nature that ensure a proper social reintegration, thus also preventing these behaviours from escalating into sexual offences and reducing the rate of reoccurrence.

General objective 

Assess the sexual health of children and adolescents in the protection system and those serving judicial sentences through a descriptive study leading to the recognition of the variables associated with an unhealthy sexual development, particularly in victims of abuse or mistreatment. For this purpose, a quantitative study will be carried out accompanied by a qualitative study through which information is to be obtained from the adolescents and young adults themselves, as well as from professionals of the residence centres and from the foster parents.

Specific goals

1. Perform a descriptive study of the following aspects in the participating children and adolescents, mainly according to the variables of age and sex:

• a) sexual and general history in the protection or judicial system.
• b) sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviours.
• c) seeking out sexual sensations, sex addiction and cybersex consumption.
• d) self-esteem and sexual assertiveness.
• e) sexist attitudes and degree of impulsivity.
• f) risk behaviours (unprotected sex, sexting, etc.).

2. Compare the sexual health of children and adolescents in residence centres to those in foster homes and serving judicial sentences.

3. Explore the ways in which traumatic sexual experiences or experiences of mistreatment and/or sexual abuse influence sexual development.

4. Compare, through qualitative studies, the view of residential foster care professionals and foster parents with that of the children and adolescents themselves, regarding their affective-sexual development.

In order to achieve these goals, an initial quantitative study will be carried out, followed by a qualitative study. Using quantitative methodology, we will obtain extensive objective information from the sample through approved assessment instruments. The qualitative methodology, will allow us to gain a deeper insight into the the point of view of the participants, accessing the reasoning behind their attitudes and actions, delving deeper into relational dynamics. We will employ a focus group analysis technique, which aims to record the feelings and thoughts of the individual through a moderator-lead group meeting of individuals who share certain similarities. The results obtained from both methodologies will be correlated following a triangulation scheme (integration of sources for the building of the report).

The target population for this study is made up of children, adolescents and young adults between the ages of 13 and 21 years old who are in residential, family or internment care. The research design will be cross-sectional with 9 levels for the variable age. As the main objective of this project is to study the sexual health in the target population according to age, gender, foster care/judicial circumstance, we will predict the sample size based on these variables. We hope to find differences between the genders in the same age category that are significant at the α = 0.01 level, with a minimum statistical power of 0.8 and a medium effect size. At the same time, information will be obtained from the parents and from the technical staff at the residential care homes, approximately 75 participants.

• Dr. Rafael Ballester Arnal (Universitat Jaume I, Castelló)

Dirección General de Ciencia y Tecnología. DGCYT.