The Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (JCSA) recently expanded the Journal’s focus to sexual victimization across the lifespan. To establish this new scope of work, The JCSA announces a call for papers for a special issue on sexual victimization across the lifespan. Manuscripts that address a wide variety of topics involving sexual victimization across the lifespan will be considered for this Special Issue. Of particular interest are methodologically rigorous program evaluations, well-designed empirical studies, and studies that implement novel methodologies and innovative intervention and prevention programs.
Topics include but are not limited to:
- The impact of victimization at different points in the lifespan (i.e., adolescent sexual victimization, victimization during emerging adulthood, victimization in middle and later adulthood) as well as the co-occurrence of victimization in multiple life periods.
- Rigorous evaluations of interventions addressing sexual victimization, including interventions for survivors and sexual violence prevention approaches.
- Studies that document the characteristics of sexual victimization experiences, including those utilizing latent class analysis, mixed methods approaches, and qualitative data.
- Studies implementing novel methodological designs (i.e., event-level methodologies, longitudinal analyses of victimization across the lifespan) to the field.
- Research on sexual victimization in understudied populations (i.e., indigenous populations, Latine individuals, LGBTQ+ communities, military sexual trauma).
- Assessment of sexual victimization among adolescents and adults (i.e., psychometric evaluation of new or adapted assessment measures).
- Commentaries, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses addressing sexual victimization across the lifespan are also welcomed.
To obtain well-rounded coverage of relevant issues, we ask potential contributors to submit article ideas via email to the guest editors in the form of a detailed summary that highlights the paper’s objectives, methods, results, and conclusions. For data-driven manuscripts, only abstracts that include a description of the study analyses, results, and sample size will be considered. Submission of an abstract represents a commitment to prepare a paper if invited. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words and describe what is being addressed from the above topics or related ones and the outline of the content of the proposed paper.
Proposed Target Audience
The Journal of Child Sexual Abuse (JCSA) is interdisciplinary and provides an essential interface for researchers, academicians, attorneys, clinicians, advocates, policy makers, and other practitioners. The journal advocates for increased networking in the sexual abuse/sexual victimization field, greater dissemination of information and research, a higher priority for this international epidemic, and development of effective assessment, intervention, and prevention programs across the lifespan.
