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	Rex Ballard - Director of Electronic Distribution
	Standard & Poor's/McGraw-Hill
	Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect
	the Management of the McGraw-Hill Companies.
	http://cnj.digex.net/~rballard

> From: evan Harrington 
> Subject: Questionnaire: Please Respond
>                          TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
>                      Department of Psychology
> 
>                     INFORMED CONSENT FORM FOR:
>          Attitudes About "False" and "Recovered" Memories
> 
> Investigators:  Evan Harrington and Brian Altman, under the sponsorship
> of professor Bruce Rind, division of social psychology.
> 
> 
> The following brief survey is being conducted on the internet in order to
> obtain a divergent sample of individuals who have spent at least some time
> thinking about the debate over "false" and "recovered" memories and about
> the nature of memory in these situations.  The survey is not intended to
> pick out "bias" in anyone's views.  Rather, we are attempting to construct
> a set of items which adequately describe the positions of individuals in
> this debate and which correlate highly with each other.  There are twenty-
> two items pertaining to different aspects of this debate.  It should take
> no more than 15 minutes to fully answer the questionnaire.
> 
> Anyone may participate.  You need not be a psychologist or a professional,
> though professionals are welcome too.
> 
> Your participation is completely voluntary.  No reward is offered, except
> the knowledge that you have participated in a project which may advance
> our knowledge in this area.  Please answer honestly, answer only once,
> and take a moment to think about each question.
> 
> Copies of this questionnaire may be freely copied and distributed so long
> as the questionnaire is not separated from the informed consent statement.
> You may respond via regular E-Mail, anonymous E-Mail, or anonymously via
> ordinary post.  For those who respond via ordinary (non-anonymous)
> E-Mail, all questionnaires will be separated from any information on
> its origins, printed out, and kept only in a file until the anonymous
> responses may be coded and analyzed.  NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW HOW
> YOU RESPONDED.
> 
> ***Very Important****  Please make sure that when you respond
> the address you are sending to is  so that
> you do not send your response to the list by accident!
> 
> Please feel free to contact me at any time regarding this project.  Since
> signatures are impossible to collect electronically, responding to the
> questionnaire implies that you have read and understood this consent form.
> Answering does not wave your legal rights.
> 
> There will be no debriefing after you complete the questionnaire because
> you have been completely informed about the scale.  Valid attitude scales in
> this area may be useful for a variety of social psychological projects.  If
> you have suggestions for new items please forward them.
> 
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Evan Harrington                evan-h@vm.temple.edu
> Department of Psychology
> Weiss Hall
> Philadelphia, PA 19122
> 
> 
> 
> 
> We would like to know how much you agree or disagree with the following
> questions about various social issues.  For each question, use the following
> scale to pick the number between -3 and +3 that best represents your
> opinion, and write it in the space beside each question.
> 
> 
> DISAGREE  -3     -2     -1      0      1      2      3   AGREE
>  TOTALLY                     NEUTRAL                    TOTALLY
> 
> 
> Sometimes you have different reactions to parts of a statement.  For
> example, you might strongly disagree ("-3") with one idea in a statement,
> but slightly agree ("+1") with another idea in the same item.  When this
> happens, please combine your reactions, and write down what you feel "on
> balance" (that is, a "-2" in this example).
> 
> 
> 
> ANSWER                        STATEMENT
> 
> -1____  1. It is extremely unlikely that a child will make up a story about
>            sexual abuse.
> 
> -1____  2. It would be fairly easy for an interviewer to guide the responses
>            of children so that children can be made to make sexual abuse
>            accusations when nothing actually happened.
> 
> -2____  3. When an adult recovers a memory of a traumatic event from
>            childhood, even after years of not thinking about it, the memory
>            is highly likely to be accurate.
> 
> +3____  4. It is possible to think about something that never happened so 
>            much that you actually start to believe it happened.
> 
> -3____  5. In order to protect children from sexual abuse society must be
>            prepared to imprison a few innocent people in order to catch all
>            the guilty ones.
> 
> +2____  6. Sometimes, people may be encouraged to "play the victim," when
>            nothing has happened to them, because of the sympathy they will
>            get.
> 
> -2____  7. There is a widespread backlash in society against believing
>            victims of sexual abuse.
> 
> +1____  8. Without outside corroboration (evidence) you can never be
>            absolutely certain about the truth of a recovered memory.
> 
> -2____  9. Children (under 8 years) simply lack the knowledge needed to
>            make up false allegations of sexual abuse.
> 
> +1____ 10. An adult could well be wrong about having been sexually abused
>            as a child if they first remembered the abuse after reading a book
>            about it.
> -2____ 11. Women who recover memories of childhood sexual abuse and then
>            say that they were wrong about their memories are simply trying
>            to protect their abusers.
> 
> +2____ 12. If a child experienced repeated sexual abuse, over several
>            years, it would be nearly impossible for that child to entirely
>            forget what happened.
> 
> +1____ 13. If a child describes being sexually abused and some of the
>            allegations seem strange or unlikely, the child was most likely
>            abused and is simply getting things a little confused because they
>            are afraid.
> 
> 0____ 14. Although it is possible for children to accurately recall real
>            events, it is also quite possible for children to become confused
>            and to believe that things have happened to them which actually
>            never happened, including child sexual abuse.
> 
> -1____ 15. For the average child, when the abuse is more traumatic the
>            child is more likely to block out the memories altogether.
> 
> 
> DISAGREE  -3     -2     -1      0      1      2      3   AGREE
>  TOTALLY                     NEUTRAL                    TOTALLY
> 
> 
> 
> +2____ 16. When dealing with accusations of sexual abuse, therapists and
>            child protection workers need to investigate the possibility that
>            the accusations could be false.
> 
> -2____ 17. Based on the symptoms someone shows when they go into
>            therapy, a trained therapist can tell if that person was
>            sexually abused as a child.
> 
> +1____ 18. Some therapists encourage their patients to recall child abuse 
>            when it never happened.
> 
> -3____ 19. It is possible for adults to accurately remember being sexually 
>            abused at the age of 6 months.
> 
> +3____ 20. Some memories are fact, some memories are a mixture of fact and
>            fiction, and some are all fiction.
> 
> -1____ 21. Dreams about bad things like child abuse may be the result of
>            repressed memories of abuse.
> 
> +1____ 22. Because some therapists believe so strongly in the danger 
posed
>            to society by child sexual abuse, they may falsely believe that some
>            of their patients have been abused, even if the patients deny it.
> 
> 
> --------end forwarded message------------
> 
> Mr. Robin Verner, editor
> The Fathering HomePage - Fathering Magazine
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~sheldon/fathering
> 
> 

From rballard@cnj.digex.net Mon Mar 25 23:33:59 1996