The stability of child abuse reports: a longitudinal study of the reporting behaviour of young adults
The stability of child abuse reports: a longitudinal study of the reporting behaviour of young adults
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DOI：
10.1017/s0033291799002111
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发表时间：
2000-05-01
影响因子：
6.9
通讯作者：
Woodward, LJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Fergusson, DM;Horwood, LJ;Woodward, LJ
背景资料。本研究的目的是利用身体虐待和性虐待的纵向报告数据来检验虐待报告的稳定性和一致性。这项研究是基于克赖斯特彻奇健康与发展研究中研究的年轻人的出生队列。在18岁和21岁时，这些年轻人被问及他们童年遭受体罚和性虐待的情况。在这些评估的同时，样本成员还被评估了精神障碍和自杀行为的测量。儿童期性虐待和体罚的报告相对不稳定，用于性侵报告重测的kappa值在0.45左右。报告中的不一致与受试者的精神状态无关。潜在类别分析表明：(A)未被虐待的人没有虚假地报告受到虐待；(B)被虐待的人提供了不可靠的报告，其中假阴性反应的概率约为50%。不同的方法将受试者归类为虐待，导致虐待流行率的估计有很大差异，但根据虐待暴露条件，对精神适应问题的相对风险的估计保持相对稳定。关于虐待儿童的报告有很大的不可靠性。之所以出现这种不可靠，是因为那些遭受虐待的人经常提供虚假的负面报告。报告中错误的后果似乎是：(A)根据一份报告对虐待流行率的估计可能严重低估了虐待的真实流行率；(B)对以滥用为条件的精神调整问题的相对风险的估计似乎与报告错误的影响密切相关。
Background. The aims of this study were to use longitudinal report data on physical and sexual abuse to examine the stability and consistency of abuse reports.Methods. The study was based on the birth cohort of young people studied in the Christchurch Health and Development Study. At ages 18 and 21 years, these young people were questioned about their childhood exposure to physical punishment and sexual abuse. Concurrent with these assessments, sample members were also assessed on measures of psychiatric disorder and suicidal behaviour.Results. Reports of childhood sexual abuse and physical punishment were relatively unstable and the values of kappa for test-retests of abuse reporting were in the region of 0.45. Inconsistencies in reporting were unrelated to the subject's psychiatric state. Latent class analyses suggested that: (a) those not abused did not falsely report being abused; and (b) those who were abused provided unreliable reports in which the probability of a false negative response was in the region of 50%. Different approaches to classifying subjects as abused led to wide variations in the estimated prevalence of abuse but estimates of the relative risk of psychiatric adjustment problems conditional on abuse exposure remained relatively stable.Conclusions. There was substantial unreliability in the reporting of child abuse. This unreliability arose because those who were subject to abuse often provided false negative reports. The consequences of errors in reports appear to be: (a) that estimates of abuse prevalence based on a single report are likely to seriously underestimate the true prevalence of abuse; while (b) estimates of the relative risk of psychiatric adjustment problems conditional on abuse appear to be robust to the effects of reporting errors.