How Many Children are Maltreated? - Incidence And Prevalence Of Child Maltreatment

Researchers use two terms—incidence and prevalence—to describe the estimates of the number of victims of child abuse and neglect. Andrea J. Sedlak and Diane D. Broadhurst defined incidence as the number of new cases occurring in the population during a given period (Third National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect [NIS-3], U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, Washington, DC, 1996). The incidence of child maltreatment is measured in terms of incidence rate: the number of children per one thousand children in the U.S. population who are maltreated annually. Surveys based on official reports by child protective services (CPS) agencies and community professionals are a major source of incidence data.

Prevalence, as defined by NIS-3, refers to the total number of child maltreatment cases in the population at a given time. Some researchers use lifetime prevalence to denote the number of people who have had at least one experience of child maltreatment in their lives. To measure the prevalence of child maltreatment, researchers use self-reported surveys of parents and child victims. Examples of self-reported surveys are the landmark 1975 National Family Violence Survey and the 1985 National Family Violence Resurvey conducted by Murray A. Straus and Richard J. Gelles.

Official Reports

Studies based on official reports depend on a number of things happening before an incident of abuse can be recorded. The victim must be seen by people outside the home, and these people must recognize that the child has been abused. Once they have recognized this fact, they must then decide to report the abuse and find out where to report it. Once CPS receives and screens the report for appropriateness, it can then take action.

In some cases the initial call to CPS is prompted by a problem that needs to be handled by a different agency. It may be a case of neglect due to poverty rather than abuse, although the initial report is still recorded as abuse.

For the data to become publicly available, CPS must keep records of its cases and then pass them on to a national group that collects those statistics. Consequently, final reported statistics are understated estimates—valuable as indicators but not definitive findings. It is very unlikely that accurate statistics on child abuse will ever be available.