NCJ Number
204158
Journal
Child Maltreatment Volume: 9 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2004 Pages: 30-48
Date Published
February 2004
Length
19 pages
Annotation
After reviewing some of the material and issues considered by those who participated in the meetings that led to the development of the Child Maltreatment Log (CML), this paper describes the CML itself and some facets of its development.
Abstract
The authors first explain how the failure to provide a clear and consistent description of maltreated children's experiences has significantly affected the quality of research on maltreatment. The paper then reviews the strengths and weaknesses of several procedures being used to describe children and types of maltreatment they have experienced. This is followed by a description of how the CML can be used to collect information on children's maltreatment experiences as well as other co-occurring events. The conceptual development of the CML is then described, along with how it can be used to improve the quality of information on maltreated children and their families. The CML is a computer-based program that guides researchers in collecting information from multiple sources and informants concerning children's maltreatment experiences. Rather than classifying types of maltreatment a priori, the CML encourages researchers to describe children's experiences by using objective descriptors that pertain to potential acts of abuse, potential perpetrators, frequency, onset, consequential injuries, and treatment. To improve scorer objectivity regarding the information collected, separate scales collect information about perpetrators, actions or omitted actions, frequency of actions, injuries, treatment sources of information, and informants. The data entry format permits the creation of a database that affords the greatest possible freedom to researchers in creating higher order constructs empirically. 5 tables and 106 references