NCJ Number
217306
Journal
Child Maltreatment Volume: 12 Issue: 1 Dated: February 2007 Pages: 68-85
Date Published
February 2007
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This article describes the development and validation of the Community Norms of Child Neglect Scale (CNCNS), a brief survey that assesses individuals' perceptions of potentially neglectful behaviors.
Abstract
The testing shows that the CNCNS is promising as a brief measure of community norms and individual perceptions of the seriousness of subtypes of child neglect. Using this scale, a broad community sample distinguished among a set of child-neglect subtypes. The sample involved in the testing of the CNCNS was diverse in terms of rural-urban, socioeconomic, and demographic characteristics other than race/ethnicity. The CNCNS should support researchers' capacities to assess community perceptions of child neglect norms. It deserves further research and validation. The CNCNS differentiates among four subtypes of neglect: failure to provide for basic needs, lack of supervision, emotional neglect, and educational neglect. Scenarios that varied in their seriousness for each of these subtypes were presented to a large community sample (n=3,809). The measurement equivalence of the CNCNS was tested across individuals who worked with children and lay community respondents, as well as across rural and urban respondents. As part of a larger study of community differences in the incidence, identification, and reporting of child neglect, the CNCNS was included in a telephone survey in 50 communities in a Midwestern State. There were approximately 75 respondents in each community represented. 8 tables and 40 references