The researchers came to the conclusion that there is an association between sexual abuse and eating disorder symptomatology. With this research study, they argue for a more specific link of childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders. They believe that the findings support their arguement that women with a history of sexual abuse are likely to present with symptomatology of an eating disorder. Due to the emergence of contrdictory research findings, it is nearly impossible to make a concrete and factual judgement on whether or not childhood sexual abuse is a specific or general link to the etiology of eating disorders. A major obstacle with these studies is methodological limitations, methodological problems, and participant willingness and ability to recall memories factually.
More problems lie within the realm of methodology.
For one, these research studies rely very heavily on clinical samples and thus may cause misrepresentation of the population. Another methodological problem is that in many of these studies linking childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders, there is generally a lack of control groups to compare the findings to. Also, their are generally small samples of subjects in many of these research studies. Many women may also feel ashamed or embarrassed to disclose information about past sexual abuse which would skew the results as well as any women who were sexually abused but have repressed it and are unable to access it from memory anymore. Finally, the memories of the abuse victims may not be accuratly reported.