Search

This bulletin discusses the second National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV II), which was conducted in 2011 as a followup to the original NatSCEV I survey. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sponsored both surveys. The Crimes against Children Research Center of the University of New Hampshire conducted the NatSCEV I survey between January and May 2008. NatSCEV I represented the first comprehensive national survey of children's past-year and lifetime exposure to violence, crime, and abuse in the home, school, and community across children and youth from ages 1 month to 17 years. As in the first NatSCEV survey, NatSCEV II researchers interviewed a nationally representative sample of children and their caregivers regarding the children's exposure to violence, crime, and abuse across several major categories: conventional crime, child maltreatment, victimization by peers and siblings, sexual victimization, witnessing and indirect victimization (including exposure to community violence, family violence, and school violence and threats), and Internet victimization. In addition to the types of exposure to violence, crime, and abuse covered in the original survey, NatSCEV II asked participants about several new types of exposure in the categories of conventional crime, child maltreatment, peer and sibling victimization, and Internet victimization. In general, NatSCEV II confirms the earlier survey's findings regarding the extent of children's past-year and lifetime exposure to violence, crime, and abuse, with few significant changes in reported exposures between the two surveys. In the NatSCEV II sample, approximately three in five children (57.7 percent) experienced at least one exposure to five aggregate types of violence in the past year (physical assault, sexual victimization, maltreatment, property victimization, and witnessing violence). The NatSCEV I and NatSCEV II surveys allow researchers and policymakers to track trends over time and to monitor the possible effects of social changes and public policies. The survey findings also enable public health officials to educate the public about the harms to children from exposure to violence, crime, and abuse. Moreover, they provide practitioners with risk and protective factor data on which to base evidence-based approaches to reducing children's exposure to violence, crime, and abuse and to craft interventions to prevent and treat the harms resulting from that exposure. [This bulletin was adapted from Finkelhor, D., Turner, H.A., Shattuck, A.M., and Hamby, S.L., "Violence, Crime, and Abuse Exposure in a National Sample of Children and Youth: An Update." "JAMA Pediatrics" v167 n7 p614-621 2013.]

The Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS) are intended to measure use of nonviolent discipline, psychological aggression, and physical assault in parent-child and other family relationships. The latter two scales provide a basis for identifying psychological and physical maltreatment. Two revisions of the CTS became available in 1996. One, the CTS2 is designed to measure relationships between partners in a marital, cohabiting, or dating relationship, while the other, the CTSPC is designed for measuring parent-child relationships. This paper makes available information based on the original CTS and the CTSPC to facilitate understanding and appropriate use. Research results suggest that the internal consistency reliability of the scales are low because parents who engage in one type of maltreatment do not necessarily maltreat the child in other ways. Despite this, when the CTS and CTSPC have been used in epidemiological surveys, they have revealed many more cases of child abuse than have been reported to child protective services. Nevertheless, research suggests that these CTS rates must be regarded as lower bound estimates. Additionally, clinical screening with the scales, while identifying many cases that would not otherwise be known, will still miss many cases. A substantial body of evidence supports the construct validity of these measures, and the brevity and minimal reading level of the scales make them feasible for clinical screening, survey research, tracking progress among families receiving services, and for obtaining data on the effectiveness of prevention and treatment programs. Two appendixes present the original CTS and CTSPC items by scale and subscale and a discussion of prevalence rates and chronicity of maltreatment. (Contains 71 references.) (SLD)

The Parent-Child Conflict Tactics Scales (CTSPC), a version of the well-established Conflict Tactics Scales, was developed to improve its ability to obtain data on physical and psychological child maltreatment. The conceptual and methodological approaches used to develop the CTSPC are described and psychometric data, including reliability, validity, and normative data, are presented based on a nationally representative sample of 1,000 U.S. parents. The Psychological Aggression and Physical Assault scales of the original version were revised to: (1) improve clarity and age-appropriateness; (2) add items to increase content validity; and (3) better differentiate among levels of severity of aggression by parents. A supplementary scale has been added to address child neglect. Reliability ranges from 0 for the severe physical assault subscale to 0.70 for the nonviolent discipline subscale. Despite low reliability coefficients, the CTSPC has found a prevalence rate for physical maltreatment of 49 per 1,000, much greater than for cases reported to child protective services, and 5 times greater than the rate uncovered in a national incidence study. The CTSPV is better suited to measure child maltreatment than the original instrument. It is brief and easy to administer. The instrument is attached as an appendix. (Contains 2 tables and 50 references.) (SLD)

In this study, 224 female undergraduates completed 4 different partner violence measures. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated that a one-factor model best fit the data, but that the measures did not represent the construct equally well. Frequency measures were more strongly associated with the latent construct, "partner violence" than were severity measures. Discusses other findings. (KW)