Exposure to Violence and Child Abuse.

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The lack of common terminology, definitions, and conceptual models has been a major stumbling block to scientific progress in the area of children’s exposure to violence. It is important to sort out the contextual factors that may affect children such as poverty, the family environment, neighborhood violence, and whether these children experience other forms of victimization. It is essential to examine the proximity of the violence, its intensity and frequency, and the relationship between perpetrator and victim. Another issue that deserves examination is how the perpetrator’s resolution to the violence (i.e., whether they accept blame or deny it) impacts the child’s reaction to the violence. Disentangling the problem of co-occurring violence requires that we comprehensively assess the characteristics of violence, children’s exposure to it, and comorbidity.

There is a need to better assess the reliability and validity of reporters of violence and abuse, and incorporate information from disinterested informants in addition to the child or parent. When children are questioned, the instruments used to measure exposure to violence should be developmentally sensitive, and take into account the child’s cognitive ability, memory, and reading level. There is a particular dearth of information about younger children. It is important to utilize data from multiple sources, including fathers, and consider pooling of data to increase sample size or coverage. In terms of surveys, there is a need for a national snapshot of children’s exposure to violence, and for researchers to replicate previous surveys for reliability and validity.

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