**2. Methodology**

This chapter was structured on the proposal of a systematic review of national and international publications on childhood sexual abuse. The focus of this systematic review is directed towards gathering, discuss critically and conduct a synthesis of results of primary studies on the subject. For this purpose we used systematic methods that enabled to identify, select and promote critical and reflective discussion as well as to collect and analyze data from these selected studies.

A systematic review consists on a rigorous synthesis of all researches related to a specific question. The question may be about cause, diagnosis, prognosis of a health problem, but often involves the effectiveness of an intervention to solve this. In this sense, the systematic review is an important resource in evidence-based practice, which consists in a form of synthesizing the research results related to a specific problem. (Galvão et al, 2004)

The review was carried out from March to June 2011, period that I am still developing my thesis in order to obtain the Doctor's degree on Nursing of the Nursing College in University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. To do so, I am counting on the support and guidance of my teacher who works at this University.

The literature search was conducted in the databases LILACS (which is the most important and comprehensive index of scientific and technical literature in Latin America and the Caribbean) and MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online). We used descriptors such as: violence, abuse, sexual abuse, child care and nursing. The inclusion criteria were published articles that contemplate the issue of violence and sexual abuse against children, in English or Portuguese between the years 2000 to 2010, available entirety online. Publications were excluded when not meet these criteria.

For the selection of productions, we observed the inclusion criteria, at a first moment. Later, we carried out a selection based on title and / or abstract and, finally, evaluated the study in full.

The survey of this study has 154 publications, 31 (20.13%) were repeated, 108 (70.13%) publications were unrelated to the topic of study. Finally, we selected 15 publcations (9.74%) by adherence to the theme of the study.

Moreover, in order to solidify and consolidate knowledge in this field, we also used in the construction of this chapter books, thesis, dissertations, and national and international documents that addressed the issue of violence against children. The content analysis of studies enabled us to organize knowledge on the subject according to the different aspects that follow in section 3.
