ADOLESCENT OUTCOME OF PHYSICALLY ABUSED SCHOOL CHILDREN

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DESCRIPTION (Adapted from applicant's abstract): This study is designed to assess the outcomes in mid to late adolescence of preadolescent physically abused and matched non-maltreated children who are currently being studied at ages 9-12 years. The outcome domains to be assessed are (1) Global adjustment, and the more specific domains of (2) Mental health, (3) Academic functioning, (4) Risk behavior, (5) Aggression/Delinquency, and (6) Personal relationships. For each, the investigators propose a model in which the path from pre-adolescent physical abuse to adolescent outcome is examined with respect to a variety of mediating factors hypothesized to protect against or exacerbate the effects of the abuse. These mediators, chosen on the basis of the previous studies of abused children and on other data in the child development literature, are all measured prior to adolescence. They are conceptualized as individual (e.g., the child's mental health, social behavior, social understanding), transactional (e.g., social status among peers, attachment, parenting), and contextual (e.g., family adversity, maternal psychopathology). Each of the models is retested as well with preadolescent exposure to family violence and community violence added to child abuse (as the causal variable). The children that are being proposed for study when they are adolescents consist of 100-confirmed cases of physical abuse recruited form the NYC Child Welfare Administrator Register and 100 non-maltreated classmates matched case by case for gender, age, ethnicity, and SES. They are being assessed now in preadolescence by means of classroom sociometry and peer behavior ratings, by individual child interviews, by teacher and parent ratings of behavior, and by parent interviews and questionnaires on family demographics, adversity, family conflict, including domestic violence, and on parenting discipline practices. The proposed assessments of outcome, as close as possible to age 17, will be carried out by means of adolescent interviews and questionnaires, teacher and parent interviews and questionnaires, and an interview and questionnaire administered to a best friend of each adolescent. Not all abused children have poor outcomes, but as a group, they are demonstrably at risk. The study's main purpose is to identify some important factors influencing the path from abuse to outcome and thereby to target possible points where intervention in childhood might avert some of abuse's costly individual and societal consequences.