Theoretical and Methodological Issues
Professor Bogat
Problems Estimating the Amount
of Child Maltreatment
I. Actual cases of child maltreatment (????)
II. Cases of child maltreatment that come
to the attention of mandated reporters
III. Cases of child maltreatment reported to CPS
(Child Protective Services)
VI. State-mandated services
VII. Arrests
IV. Cases that are screened-in by CPS
intake workers, leading to CPS report
V. Substantiated cases of
child maltreatment
From textbook, page 32
VIII. Convictions
Problems with Estimation
 The graph on the prior slide indicates some of the
problems with estimating the incidence of child
maltreatment.
 We start with a lack of knowledge about exactly how
many cases of child maltreatment occur in the U.S.
 As the funnel narrows, each step along the way is
another challenge to estimating the incidence.
 By the time we get to actual convictions of
perpetrators, we are only considering a small # of the
actual cases that occurred.
Official Estimates
 Two primary sources of official statistics on child
maltreatment
 1. National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System
 2. National Incidence Study
National Child Abuse and Neglect
Data System (NCANDS)
 Federally-sponsored program collects yearly data
 Collates reports from State Child Protective
Services(CPSs)
 Best data we have, but . . .
 Only includes child maltreatment reported to State
CPSs (Only a certain % of cases that occur are ever
reported)
 Definitions of child maltreatment may vary by State (see
next slide)
Federal Definitions and State Definitions regarding
NCANDS


“Each State has its own definitions of child abuse and neglect that are based on
standards set by Federal law. Federal legislation provides a foundation for States
by identifying a set of acts or behaviors that define child abuse and neglect. The
Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), (42 U.S.C. §5101), as
amended by the CAPTA Reauthorization Act of 2010, retained the existing
definition of child abuse and neglect as, at a minimum:
 Any recent act or failure to act on the part of a parent or caretaker which
results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or
exploitation; or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of
serious harm.
Most States recognize four major types of maltreatment: neglect, physical abuse,
psychological maltreatment, and sexual abuse. Although any of the forms of child
maltreatment may be found separately, they also can occur in combination.”
Quotations taken from U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Administration for Children and Families, Administration on Children, Youth and
Families, Children’s Bureau. (2011). Child Maltreatment 2010. Available from
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/stats_research/index.htm#can.
NCANDS
 I encourage you to visit the government’s website
http://cwoutcomes.acf.hhs.gov/data/overview and
look at the child maltreatment data for individual
states and overall. The data is broken down by age of
victim, race/ethnicity of victim, type of maltreatment,
and time to investigation.
National Incidence Study (NIS)
 Began before NCANDS
 Purpose was to determine true national incidence of
child maltreatment, not incidence based on CPS
reports
 Latest NIS (2010) surveyed 11,000 professionals who
work with children and may have knowledge of child
maltreatment
 Positives: employ uniform definition of different types
of child maltreatment that includes both an
endangerment standard and a harm standard (see next
slide)
NIS: Harm vs. Endangerment
 Under the Harm Standard, children can be considered
mistreated only if they have experienced some type of
harm from abuse or neglect by parents. These are
typically the cases that come to the attention of CPS.
 Under the Endangerment Standard, children who have
not yet experienced abuse or neglect, but are at risk of
such, are included. The Endangerment Standard also
includes children who are in the Harm Standard. It
also includes events that are done by perpetrators
other than parents.
Self-Report Surveys
 Another way to get an estimate of the incidence of




maltreatment is by administering a self-report survey
to a representative sample of the population.
Advantage: ability to ascertain events that might not
reach the attention of professionals or CPS
Disadvantage: The self-report will necessarily be
retrospective. Usually questions are phrased to ask
whether certain actions occurred in the past year.
Disadvantage: Memory can be faulty
Disadvantage: Respondents might not tell the truth
Three Widely-Used Self Report
Surveys
 Conflict Tactics Scale (see textbook for discussion and
copies of items)
 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
 Semi-annual survey of 60,000 households
 Includes questions about all types of crime, including child
maltreatment
 Juvenile Victimization Questionnaire (JVQ)
 Measures all types of childhood victimization (e.g., bullying)
as well as child maltreatment
 The questionnaire is given via interview. When screening
questions about a particular type of victimization are
answered “yes” then follow-up questions are asked (e.g., who
was the perpetrator).
Explaining Child Maltreatment
 Cultural Context
 Most Americans believe that it is ok to hit your child
 Violence exists on a continuum
 Our society condones much violence (tv, movies,
cartoons).
 Condoned violence may lead to uncondoned violence.
Parents who abuse their children often say that the
violence escalated—they only planned to discipline the
child (maybe hit them on the hand or behind), not
abuse them.
Explaining Child Maltreatment
(con’t)
 Structural characteristics of the family make children
vulnerable
 Family interactions can be stressful
 We spend a lot of time with our families—young
children can’t just leave the household if aggression
escalates
 Children are subordinate to parents and taught to obey
their parents, not fight back
 Even when parents are reported for abuse, every effort is
made to keep the children with the family. Parents are
usually given a few chances to change.
Explaining Child Maltreatment
(con’t)
 Low Costs of Child Maltreatment
 There is little cost for abusing children
 Many people believe that childhood victimizations are
somehow less serious than other aggression or are an
expected part of childhood
 The low costs are slowly changing
 There are many mandatory reporting laws
 More pressure to remove children from abusive homes
 Your textbook authors argue, however, that the costs are still
low
Etiology of Child Maltreatment
 4 broad etiological theories/models
 Social Ecology/Social Bonding Theories
 Social class, strain and frustration
 Social learning theories
 Attachment and parent-child interaction theories
Social Ecology/Social Bonding
Theories
 Social Ecology Theory--child maltreatment occurs as an
interaction between the child and his/her environment
 When there is a breakdown in community and shared
responsibility then adults in entire neighborhoods can be
more likely to abuse children
 There are many factors that lead to child maltreatment—not
just one. Individual factors don’t predict child maltreatment,
but the accumulation of many risk factors does
 Social Bonding theory asks why adults don’t abuse children
when they live in an environment that leads many to do so
 Hirschi (1969) argues that when there are strong social bonds,
people are less likely to act in deviant ways
Social Class, Strain, and Frustration
Theories
 Poverty is a direct contributor to child maltreatment
 Rates of child maltreatment are higher among the
poor and unemployed
 The stressors associated with poverty as well as the
unequal distribution of opportunities creates strain
and frustration for families. Adults then are more
likely to abuse their children.
Social Learning Theory
 Children who are exposed to aggression model these
behaviors with their own children (the
intergenerational transmission of violence)
 Children model these behaviors because they learn
that violence is an acceptable way to resolve problems
and there is reinforcement for violence (child is
whining which annoys father, father hits child, child
stops whining)
Attachment and Parent-Child
Interaction Theories
 These theories propose that an interaction between
characteristics of the child and characteristics of the parent
lead to a situation in which abuse is more likely.
 Research shows that children who are difficult or coercive
are more likely to elicit corporal punishment from their
parents (e.g., Reid, Patterson, & Snyder, 2002)
 Your textbook cites evidence for this interaction while
cautioning that we should not blame the victim—children
are never responsible for their victimization
 However, there is an interesting article, not cited in the
text, that sheds more light on this issue (see next slide)
Parent-Child Interaction Theories
(con’t)





Corporal punishment is not the same as child maltreatment. Does children’s difficult and coercive
behavior also elicit child maltreatment?
Twin studies can help us understand how much influence a child has on his/her maltreatment. One
way is to examine the similarity in discipline/maltreatment received by monozygotic (MZ) and
dizygotic twins (DZ).
 Recall that MZ twins share all their genes and DZ twins share about ½ of their genes.
 Therefore, If MZ twins discipline/maltreatment is more similar than DZ twins, it suggests that
there must be some genetic characteristic of the child that is leading to that
discipline/maltreatment on the part of the parent.
Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, Polo-Tomas, Price, & Taylor (2004) examined this question using twin research.
They found very interesting results.
 “There is likely to be a contingent, genetically mediated relation between children’s difficult
coercive behavior and their experience of corporal punishment, whereas there is less likely to be
such a contingent relation between children’s behavior and their experience of maltreatment.”
 In other words, parents’ abusive behavior is not provoked by the child; parents’ corporal
punishment discipline does seem to be related to the child’s behavior.
These authors suggest that “demographic risk factors (e.g., low education, single parenthood,
neighborhood poverty), familial risk factors (e.g., marital conflict, parent psychopathology, parents’
negative emotionality), and parenting risk factors (e.g., low parental
involvement) predict maltreatment (Azar, 2002; Belsky, 1993; Jaffee, in press).”
Methodological Issues: How can
we conduct better research on
child maltreatment?


Universal definitions of different types of child maltreatment do not exist—this may be a difficult
problem to solve as one person can look at a behavior differently than another person
Difficult to establish cause-and-effect relationships.
 Most child maltreatment research is retrospective (people are asked to think about their
behavior in the past) and correlational (we take variables and associate them with each other)
 Retrospective, correlational research cannot establish causation. Two variables can be correlated
with each other, but one might not cause the other.
 One way to establish cause-effect relationships is to use an experimental design—but how would
we do this with child maltreatment?
 Longitudinal vs. cross-sectional studies
Longitudinal studies allow us to study the behaviors of the same group of people over time to see
how their behavior changes and what effects their behavior.
 Cross-sectional studies are more common—they are just a snapshot of what is happening with a
group of people at a particular moment

 Twin Studies

See previous slide. You can see how a twin design can tease apart a number of different issues
that other designs cannot