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

eport the child to CPS, which in turn makes it more likely that CPS will investigate the child’smaltreatment.Annualization adjustments. Statisticians developed annualization adjustmentfactors using a calendar year of maltreatment child data from the National Child Abuse andNeglect Data System (NCANDS). Walter R. McDonald and Associates prepared a calendar yearfile from the FY2005 and FY2006 NCANDS child files, including child records where the (1)county of report was in the NIS–4 (2) date of report was in calendar year 2005, and (3) reportdisposition was substantiated or indicated. Four adjustment factors were derived, distinguishedby season (fall versus spring) and by source of report (school versus other sources). In eachcase, the multiplier was the unduplicated total number of substantiated/indicated childrenreported during the full calendar year divided by the unduplicated total reported during the 2005months that corresponded to the months of the NIS–4 reference periods (i.e., September 4—December 3 or February 4—May 3). 33 At the time of the annualization work, the NCANDS FY2006 file was not yet finalized, but it was deemedsufficiently complete and accurate to cover the full calendar year and these reference periods in 2005. Comparingmultipliers derived from this file to multipliers computed from the NCANDS 2004 data showed only smalldifferences (school multipliers were 3.50 in the NCANDS FY2005 data and 3.64 in the 2004 NCANDS data;multipliers for all other sources were 3.99 in the NCANDS FY2005 data and 3.90 in the 2004 data). This indicatedthat the multipliers change only slightly from one year to the next, implying that little would be gained by delayingthe analyses to integrate multipliers from the finalized NCANDS FY2006 file. The forthcoming Analysis Reportprovides further details.A-28