NCJ Number
237898
Journal
Child Abuse & Neglect Volume: 35 Issue: 10 Dated: October 2011 Pages: 783-796
Date Published
October 2011
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This article proposes a set of clinically usable definitions for use with victims of child emotional abuse and emotional aggression.
Abstract
Results of a study testing a proposed parent-report measure of parental emotional aggression and child emotional abuse show a 96 percent agreement with the measure in the 5-site development trial, and a 90 percent agreement with the measure in the 41-site dissemination trial. The proposed criteria were then compared to those currently used by researchers to measure levels of child emotional abuse and emotional aggression. Based on the results of a dissemination trials, a self-report measure was developed and used to evaluate the level of parental emotional aggression and child emotional abuse in an online survey of U.S. Air Force personnel and their spouses (n=52,780). The results of the survey indicate that while emotionally aggressive acts reported by parents in the sample were higher than the reported incidences of emotional abuse, the rate was lower than those commonly cited in the research literature. These findings show that the proposed definitions for child emotional aggression and abuse appear to provide clinicians with a better tool for measuring actual levels of parental emotional aggression and child emotional abuse than those that are currently available. Tables, references, and appendixes