Physical Child Abuse Perpetrator Screening and Evaluation

• NCJ Number: 128775
• Journal: Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 18 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1991) Pages: 47-63
• Author(s): J S Milner
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 17 pages
• Grant Number(s): MH34252
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Mental Health
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Test/Measurement
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: From a special issue on physical child abuse.

Annotation

This article describes some of the risk/benefit issues of assessment instruments in the screening and evaluation of physical child abuse perpetrators.

Abstract

The self-report, perpetrator assessment instruments reviewed are the Child Abuse Potential (CAP) Inventory, initially designed as a physical child abuse screening scale; the Michigan Screening Profile of Parenting (MSPP), a questionnaire initially developed to screen for child abuse and neglect; the Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS), which has been used in national surveys of family violence; the Parenting Stress Index (PSI), developed to assess parenting and child-related stress separate from general life stress; and the Adult/Adolescent Parent Inventory (AAPI), developed to assess parents' attitudes and expectations. Very few scales report individual classification rates and predictive validity data for physical child abuse. Among the measures developed specifically for physical child abuse assessment, only the CAP Inventory contains response distortion indexes for detecting faking-good, faking-bad, and random response behavior. Generally, risk assessment should include multiple measures (with different formats) of multiple constructs taken from multiple sources. Where possible, test data should be supplemented with interview and observational data that describe the past history and current functioning of the parent. 79 references