Did Norwegian adolescents suffer more violence and sexual abuse during the Covid-19 pandemic? Violence and sexual abuse rates the year before the pandemic compared to rates one year into the pandemic

  1. Else-Marie Augusti
  2. Mia Cathrine Myhre
  3. Tore Wentzel-Larsen
  4. Gertrud Sofie Hafstad

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Abstract

Background

The Covid-19 pandemic is a public health crisis which may cause unintended additional societal costs such as child maltreatment. Considerable concern is raised as to whether the pandemic has led to an increase in violence and sexual abuse against children.

Objective

The present study objective is to provide rates of violence and sexual abuse against adolescents the year before the pandemic compared to one year into the pandemic.

Participants and setting

Two samples of Norwegian 12-16-year-olds were approached. A representative pre-pandemic sample of 9240 adolescents ( M age= 14.11), and a sample recruited one year into the pandemic resulting in 3540 responses ( M age (SD) = 14.5).

Methods

An online survey was administered during school hours including established measures of violence and sexual abuse exposure. Sociodemographic characteristics were assessed.

Results

There was 1.4 percentage point increase in sexual abuse by an adult, and a 3.9 percentage point decrease in psychological violence by a parent during the pandemic compared to the year before the pandemic. Otherwise, violence and sexual abuse rates remained stable across these two time periods. Risk factors for violence and sexual abuse were amplified during the pandemic.

Conclusion

Norway, a high-income welfare state, imposed measures to counteract the burden of the pandemic mitigation actions for adolescents. This might partly explain the absence of the feared increase in violence towards adolescents. The disproportionate risk for violence and sexual abuse for some groups of adolescents is however concerning, and should be followed up over time.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.04.26.22274316: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The study was approved by the Regional committee for ethics in medical and health research in the Southeastern region of Norway (Case #2018/522).
    Consent: All participants provided informed digitally written consent, no parental consent was required for the adolescents to participate.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All analyses were conducted in SPSS version 26 (IBM Corp, released 2019), except the bootstrap procedure which was run in the R (1.4.116) package boot.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Strengths and limitations: The prospective longitudinal design with pre-pandemic baseline data, allowing for direct comparisons with the adolescents’ self-reported violence exposure one year prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, is a strength of this study. The study therefore makes an important addition to the body of literature that is scrutinizing the effects of the pandemic and the related restrictions on violence and abuse. Due to the school-based survey design we may unintentionally have missed the most marginalized groups of adolescents, who we know from previous research may be more subject to violence. As such, we may have underestimated the actual rates of violence. That said, we would assume this bias would be present both before and during the pandemic, and as such not necessarily influencing the change or lack thereof. We were not able to include younger children in this survey, due to the study design and ethical permissions. Other research with baseline data from before the pandemic should consider the situation for younger children, as they are more reliant upon parents capable of taking care. Also, family and care related stress may be higher in families with smaller children, and where parents had to combine home office arrangements and care taking of younger children.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.04.26.22274316v1 on medRxiv