TY  - SER
AU  - Fergusson, David M. 
AU  - Horwood,Leonard John
AU  - Woodward,Lianne J.
TI  - The stability of child abuse reports: a longitudinal study of the reporting behaviour of young adults
SN  - 0033-2917
PY  - 2000///
KW  - FVC
KW  - CHILD PROTECTION
KW  - Christchurch Health and Development Study
KW  - MENTAL HEALTH
KW  - STATISTICS
KW  - CHILD ABUSE
KW  - NEW ZEALAND
N1  - Psychological Medicine 30 (3) May 2000 : 529-544
N2  - The study discussed in this article used longitudinal report data from a birth cohort of young people studied in the Christchurch Health and Development Study. Data on physical and sexual abuse was used to examine the stability and consistency of retrospective abuse reports. Questions about childhood exposure to physical punishment and sexual abuse were asked at ages 18 and 21 years. The sample members were also assessed on measures of psychiatric disorder and suicidal behaviour. The authors examined the extent to which stability and instability in reports of abuse were related to the presence of psychiatric disorder both prior to, and following the reporting of abuse. The results indicate substantial unreliability in the reporting of child abuse. This arose because those who were subject to abuse often provided false negative reports. The authors suggest that the consequences of the errors appear to be that estimates of abuse prevalence based on a single report are likely to seriously underestimate the true prevalence of abuse; while estimates of the relative risk of psychiatric adjustment problems conditional on abuse appear to be robust to the effects of reporting errors
UR  - http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0033291799002111
ER  -