Effects of violence and maltreatment on the development and well-being of children: Experimental approaches to studying the causal effects of maltreatment reduction (The EVIDENCE – Studies)

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Child maltreatment inflicts immediate and often lasting physical and psychological pain on affected children. It has been associated with a broad range of negative short- and long-term outcomes, including psychological difficulties and poor academic performance. These relationships are often interpreted as being causal in nature, with maltreatment assumed to cause negative developmental trajectories. However, most findings are based only on correlational analyses, which do not allow for such an interpretation. Causal relationships can only be determined by experimental studies. When it comes to the study of childhood maltreatment, though, the research using experimental methodologies are scarce. In Germany, maltreatment occurs behind “closed doors”, making it difficult to investigate its effects in experimental field studies. Yet, the high prevalence and social acceptance of the use of violence in child rearing in Sub-Saharan Africa provides an excellent opportunity for experimental manipulations on the basis of interventions seeking to reduce maltreatment. Despite the different global contexts, the potential findings are of significant relevance for Germany too, since the underlying mechanisms are potentially the same. In this project, I aim to complement current research by testing the effects of a maltreatment-reducing intervention on a spectrum of outcomes in the context of educational institutions in Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to investigate these effects on children, the following three steps are necessary: 1. The effectiveness of interventions seeking to reduce maltreatment must be tested. 2. Longitudinal studies on the effects of maltreatment that assess the potential outcomes at more than one time point and that are therefore able to control for other influences on the later outcome must be conducted. 3. Experimental studies must be conducted in order to evaluate the causal relationship between maltreatment and various outcomes. The proposed studies aim to combine these three steps: In experimental field studies, the proposed project will test the effectiveness of an intervention aiming for a reduction in maltreatment and investigate the effects of (reducing) maltreatment in the general population of children across educational settings, societies, cultures, and in a high-risk group of orphaned children. Moreover, the project will focus on the effects of maltreatment on pre-school children. In addition to determining the effectiveness of the intervention, the proposed studies allow for the monitoring of the temporal effects of maltreatment on children between the ages of 3 to 17 both in community samples and high-risk samples. The proposed studies open up the possibility of testing the causal relationship between maltreatment and various outcomes, ranging from children’s well-being to social and cognitive functioning.