Studying the Rate of Physical and Emotional Abuse among Elementary School Students of Isfahan in 2014 and Its Relation with Some of the Cognitive Demographic Characteristics for Better Health Care

Aim: Determining the rate of physical and emotional abuse among elementary school students of Isfahan and its relation with demographic characteristics

Place and Duration of the Study: The study was conducted in 12 elementary school of Isfahan in central Iran from November to January of 2014.

Methods: In this analytic descriptive study 500 elementary students from 12 elementary schools under supervision of The Education Department of Isfahan, central Iran, were participated. Samples were selected through multi-step random sampling. Data was gathered using a researcher made questionnaire about some individual and family characteristics and physical and emotional abuse from January to November 2014. Data was analyzed using SPSS software and by appropriate analytic descriptive statistics.

Results: Results showed that “you were forced to stand in the corner of the class” among choices for physical abuse (mean = +1.87, -0.96) and “you were shout at” among choices for emotional abuse (mean = +1.80, -0.98) gained the highest mean scores. There was a significant relation between the age and sex of student and their fathers’ job with the rate of physical and emotional abuse. But mothers’ education only had a statistically significant relation with emotional abuse. There was no significant relation between fathers’ education and mothers’ job with the rate of physical and emotional abuse.

Conclusions: Since physical and emotional abuse does exist among elementary school students, and it is more in boys rather than girls and in older students rather than younger students, careful planning, supervisory actions and necessary educations regarding this field are essential.