Alcohol Availability, Alcohol Use and Child Maltreatment

描述（由申请人提供）：酒精在儿童虐待病因学中的重要性和作用仍未得到很好的理解。关于父母酗酒对儿童虐待的影响的研究结果是混合的和不确定的。此外，研究人员还没有研究酒精的实际可得性可能通过何种机制影响儿童虐待。通过调查酒精的实际可用性如何影响儿童虐待，拟议研究的结果将提供关于酒精在儿童虐待的病因学中的重要性和作用的新信息，这种虐待从仅仅关注个人行为转移到可能使儿童面临更高身体虐待和忽视风险的环境条件。这项提议的研究将超越以往的研究：(1)调查酒精使用水平，而不仅仅是酒精滥用或酒精中毒，与儿童身体虐待和忽视之间的关系；(2)测试一个概念模型，该模型检验酒精使用和酒精的实际可得性如何可能是导致儿童身体虐待和/或忽视的两条途径；(3)在一个具有全国代表性的年轻成年父母概率样本中检验这些关系。因此，这项研究减少了在使用特定人群（如已经在儿童福利系统中的父母和酗酒父母）时引入的偏见。本研究将使用2002年第三次全国青少年健康纵向调查（Add Health）的年轻成年父母（n~ 2427）的访谈资料。本研究的发现将提高我们对酒精在儿童虐待病因学中的重要性和作用的理解，并将为设计有效的预防方案提供理论和经验基础，以减少儿童虐待以及与虐待相关的个人和社会成本。这项研究还将产生一个数据集，其中包含2000年人口普查的背景因素和酒精出口密度变量，可以与其他调查人员的Add Health访谈数据一起分析。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The importance and role of alcohol in the etiology of child maltreatment is still not well understood. Findings of studies on the effect of parental alcoholism on child maltreatment are mixed and inconclusive. Moreover, researchers have not examined through what mechanism(s) physical availability of alcohol may affect child maltreatment. By investigating how the physical availability of alcohol affects child maltreatment, findings of the proposed study will provide new information on the importance and role of alcohol in the etiology of child maltreatment that moves away from solely focusing on individual behaviors to environmental conditions that may place children at elevated risk for physical abuse and neglect. This proposed study will go beyond previous research by (1) investigating how level of alcohol use, not just alcohol abuse or alcoholism, is related to committing child physical abuse and neglect; (2) testing a conceptual model that examines how alcohol use and the physical availability of alcohol may be two pathways that lead to committing child physical abuse and/or neglect; and (3) examining these relationships in a nationally representative probability sample of young adult parents. Thus, this study reduces the biases introduced when specialized populations such as parents already in the child welfare system and alcoholic parents are used. This study will use interview data from young adult parents (n~ 2,427) who participated in the third wave of National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in 2002. Findings from this study will improve our understanding of the importance and role of alcohol in the etiology of child maltreatment, and will provide a theoretical and empirical basis for designing effective prevention programs to reduce child maltreatment and the individual and societal costs related to maltreatment. This study also will yield a dataset with contextual factors from the 2000 census and alcohol outlet density variables that can be analyzed with Add Health interview data by other investigators.