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

classification hierarchy. If more than one source recognized a child’s maltreatment, NISprocedures place the child in the first applicable source in this sequence, with oneproviso—sources of reports to CPS take precedence over sources of NIS sentinel dataforms. This classification scheme first credits sources that reported children to CPS whowere accepted by CPS for investigation. For children not investigated by CPS, thescheme assigns recognition credit to the source who submitted the child to the NIS.Thus, if both a police department and a CPS agency submitted a child to theNIS, and the CPS received the report on the child from a hospital, NIS classified thehospital as the source that recognized the child. 98 As the source of the report to CPS, theNIS identifies the hospital as the recognition source. With this exception, the hierarchyapplies to resolve multiple sources of reports to CPS and submissions from multiplesentinel sectors. For example, if the NIS received two sentinel data forms on a child, onefrom a police department and the other from a hospital, the hierarchy applies credit to thepolice as the recognition source. Similarly, if a child entered the NIS through CPSinvestigation data and the CPS record shows that CPS received two reports on the child,one from shelter staff and the other from a neighbor, then the hierarchy applies to creditthe shelter staff as the recognition source (since the neighbor comes under “All OtherSources,” the lowest source in the hierarchy).98 For this classification to apply, it was not sufficient for the CPS investigation record to simply list thechild as a member of the household. It was also necessary that the CPS record show that CPS recognizedthis child’s maltreatment. Operationally, this meant that the CPS record either identified the child as analleged or indicated victim or described details of the child’s countable maltreatment. See the discussionin Chapter 8 concerning CPS recognition of children’s maltreatment.7-3