Fourth National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS–4)

5. DISTRIBUTION OF ABUSE AND NEGLECT BY FAMILY CHARACTERISTICSThis chapter examines how the incidence and severity of abuse and neglectvary by specific characteristics of the children’s families, including their parents’employment, socioeconomic status, family structure and living arrangement, anygrandparent caregiver, family size, and the metropolitan status of their county ofresidence. The ensuing sections address the following questions for both the HarmStandard and the Endangerment Standard:• Do children in families with different characteristics havesystematically different incidence rates for the various types ofmaltreatment or for the different severities of outcomes due tomaltreatment?• (If applicable): Have there been any statistically significant changessince the NIS–3 in the distribution of child maltreatment by the familycharacteristic in question? 55Although the topics in this chapter are family characteristics, the units ofmeasurement for all NIS estimates are the children. Thus, the incidence rates reflect thenumber of children per 1,000 in the general population who live in families with thecharacteristic of interest (e.g., children who live in families of low socioeconomic status,children in households with four or more children, etc.).As in Chapter 4, the findings here reflect unduplicated estimates; that is, eachestimate counts each child only once. Also, all differences between subgroups refer onlyto incidence rates. 56 As mentioned earlier, the rate measures adjust for differences in thenumbers of children in the general population who are in the different subgroups ofinterest, so all statistical comparisons use the rate measures. 5755 The measures available in the NIS–3 allowed analyses to address this question for three characteristics:family structure, family size, and metropolitan status of the county of residence.56 Appendices B and C detail all NIS–4 estimates, including the estimated rates as well as totals, togetherwith their standard errors of estimate.57 Appendix D provides the detailed results of all within-NIS–4 statistical comparisons. Appendix Econtains the details of all between-study comparisons.5–1