Children's Exposure to Violence, Crime, and Abuse: An Update. National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence. Juvenile Justice Bulletin. NCJ 248547

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.]