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

emotional neglect incidence may predominantly reflect the heightened CPS attention tothese problems, which are involved in certain types of emotional neglect. Furtheranalyses will clarify whether the increases in emotional neglect primarily occurred inspecific types of emotional neglect or for children recognized at specific types ofagencies.Another area where further analyses can illuminate the implications of theNIS–4 findings is in the interrelationships among the different factors associated with theincidence of maltreatment. Factors such as parents’ labor force participation, householdsocioeconomic status, family size, and family structure and living arrangement are notonly associated with the incidence of maltreatment but are also correlated with eachother. Further analyses could determine their independent relationships to maltreatment,such as whether households with more children have higher incidence rates even whenhousehold socioeconomic status is taken into account. Moreover, for the first time inNIS, the NIS–4 found race differences in the incidence of maltreatment, with higherincidence rates for Black children. Similar to the approach used in exploring the NIS–3data (Sedlak & Schultz, 2005), future analyses should examine whether these racedifferences in maltreatment rates remain when the disadvantaging effects of these familycircumstances are taken into account.The NIS–4 findings on the strong correlations between socioeconomic statusand all categories of maltreatment are consistent with earlier NIS findings on householdincome. As with the previous results, the recent observations cannot be plausiblyexplained by the claim that lower socioeconomic families are simply more visible to thecommunity professionals who provide most of the data. The NIS sentinels observesubstantial numbers of children and families at the middle- and upper-income levels. Thepeople who recognize the large majority of maltreated children are likely to encountermaltreatment in all income levels, since they include sentinels in hospitals, schools, daycare centers, mental health agencies, voluntary social service agencies, as well asprofessionals not represented by NIS sentinel categories and the general public. Sentinelsin schools alone recognized the majority of the maltreated children. Although the NISdesign includes only public schools, approximately 90% of school-age children attendpublic schools (Shin, 2005), so they represent a broad spectrum of socioeconomic statuslevels. Moreover, since the majority (more than 80%) of children in private schools(those not reflected in the NIS) are in religiously affiliated schools (Provasnik,KewalRamani, Coleman, Gilbertson, Herring, & Xie, 2007), which frequently have9–2